Bonds of Betrayal
by AlexHamato
Summary: Ancient pasts untold and hidden messages locked in a journal that was left behind by the adventurous Augustus O'Neil. These messages will bring to light the bonds that family can hold together, or break apart.
1. Chapter 1

_I can't even begin at how hard it was to think of a Title for this, which I am still not happy with, heh heh heh. I've been wanting to write this for awhile, so I'll try to keep this updated as quick as I can, although I have quite the number of stories to juggle, so no promises. _

_I do not own Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Nickelodeon does._

* * *

Rattling breaths and scuffled footsteps surround and trap him, frozen with his heart in his throat as the surrounding darkness swallows up his small visual. Ancient stone and rubble lay at his feet as blue light filters down from an unknown source above. The lighted circle around him shrinks, ensnaring him. He couldn't escape.

He spins on the spot, pulse pounding and eyes stretching impossibly wide as the shadows creep over the rocks as thick, sticky syrup would across a porcelain plate. Ears prickled almost painfully as the breaths turned into inhumane screams that made his blood run cold and heart quicken. Mouths, warped and pained flickered through the darkness as a lighter shade of grey.

"Who's there?" The question lingers in the darkness as the light fades. The sluggish shadow reached his feet and the iced chill wraps around his entire body, pulling it downwards as his stomach moved to jump out his throat. Lungs collapsed and the cold never left, just consumed. More blue light cuts through the black fluid as he swam towards it. Needed to escape, needed to get to air.

The blue light was bright and warm. He reached out to touch it as his hand is consumed by the light. Shadowed figures lay in the middle of the spectacle, the silhouettes surrounded by a halo of crimson. Familiar figures. Figures he cared about. He tried to pull back from the light, but it dragged him forward. The figures grew until he could see every miniscule detail. Every open wound, luminescent bone incased in flesh, and unseeing eyes staring blankly at him. He opened his mouth to say something, anything before the images fade. Left him alone.

Light was swallowed up by the darkness, a giant gaping mouth sucking him in, leaving him tired and weary as he lets his body drift with the force. The images that were so familiar before were gone. He couldn't gather the energy to scream as he began to fall, the familiar sensation thrilling and terrifying simultaneously. Elevated cries that could not be his own filled his mind, filled every sense as the taste of blood rolled across his tongue and he found himself staring at a concrete floor.

The floor to his room. At home.

Twisting out of the covers and kicking them far away, he scrambled to his feet and wiped his bloodied mouth on the back of his hand. Probably bit his tongue. He was so going to feel that in a week. Nightmares were never any fun.

Michelangelo picked the discarded blankets back up, to toss them on his bed in a sloppy heap. Deciding not to think or even reflect of the creepy nightmare, he took himself away from the dark room and shuffled into the lighted living room. Blue screens from the televisions illuminated the couch and he grimaced with distaste. A little too familiar for him.

The blood was stick thick and coppery in his mouth. He needed to get some air. Turning on the spot, hoping that he didn't wake up anyone, he left the lair and began his long, wandering walk through the sewers.

Murky brown water and the grey folds of moss that covered the sewer walls kept on reflecting those images back to him. Images of his family, beaten and battered. The nightmare wasn't new, it was too familiar for comfort, and he always hated every second of them. With only the faint light emanating from his phone, the sewers were a bit too dark for his taste. Mikey moved above ground by the first ladder he could find and instantly felt a weight of relief float off his chest as the fresh, albeit slightly polluted, New York city air slapped his face. Always a great wake up ceremony.

"Good morning, New York." Mikey grinned despite the darkness he left behind in the manhole cover as he slammed down the iron lid a bit harder than he usually would have. "And goodbye creepy ass dream," he added under his breath. His eyes raked the rooftops as his body followed, realizing that an ice cream scourge at April's place seemed to be a mighty fine idea right about now. His grin widened as his feet quickened across the cold paved roofs. This wouldn't take long at all.

Mikey knew it was early morning, but he could've sworn that April liked to sleep in on weekends, mainly because Saturday was the only day she could sleep in. Peeking into the apartment, his eyes popped at the woman's undergarments and assorted bags and make-up piles that littered the coffee table and couch. Music was playing loudly from the bathroom, along with some off-key singing that didn't sound familiar. He couldn't remember the last time he did hear April sing, but he was pretty sure it was bad. Sniggering as loudly as he dared, he crept into the apartment and immediately left towards the fridge.

The cold air was soothing on his hands and the puff of frosty mist hitting his face made his teeth chatter, but his face dropped at the lack of food in general. April was cleaned out. Moaning dramatically as he closed both the freezer and fridge doors, he contemplated eating crackers, then decided against it. Crackers weren't comfort food, ice cream or anything ridiculously unhealthy was!

Listening to the high pitched hip hop music streaming in from the closed bathroom door, his mouth twitched and twisted into a mischievous grin. Pressing himself up tight against the wall and humming the Pink Panther theme song as loudly as he could get away with, he slid towards the bathroom and opened the door, hopping inside and grabbing the first towel he could get his hands on. April had her hair up in a towel, along with a faded pink peacock towel wrapped around her body and a pea-green mask of paint smeared across her face. At least, Mikey thought it was paint. Either that or baby food.

"On-guards!" Mikey rolled the towel tightly and snapped it against the woman's rump, "Defend yourself, teacup!"

April yelped a name, "Casey!" While turning away from the mirror with a mouth full of toothpaste foam, "You're such an assho-" The insult was interrupted by an ear splitting scream that caused Mikey to drop the towel with a scream himself and back away with his hands pressed up against his ear holes.

"Holy shit, April! Tone it down a bit! It's just me!"

"Help! Casey!" Toothpaste brush was thrown towards him, along with several glass bottles of fingernail polish and mascara. He ducked the brush and caught the bottles, only to be rewarded with one striking him in the mouth as he rolled out of the bathroom, "There's a green burglar! April!"

"Huh?" Mikey's face scrunched in confusion as the door was slammed on his face, "Wai-What? I'm not a burglar! April, it's just me, remember? Mikey!" They dealt with enough supernatural mumbo-jumbo in their lives, maybe her memory was stolen?

"Don't play innocent with me you, you… voyeur!" April babbled as she struggled to come up with the insult. "If you came here for dirty pictures, I'm going to sue you! I don't let losers in furry costumes take pictures of me naked! April!"

Mikey looked behind him, at the short hallway with closed bedroom door and then back to the bathroom door before him with an expression of utter confusion. He still carried assortments of bottled accessories in his hands as his head rotated from hallway to bathroom door. "Huh?"

"April! Come out here with your hairy boyfriend and get rid of this guy before he tries to take advantage of me!"

"I'm not going to do ANYTHING to you, April! Stop talking in third person! It's creeping me out!"

"I'm not April, you creep!" There was a pause behind the door and Mikey swore he could hear the gears turn in the ladies head, "What the hell did you do to my sister, you asshole! I'm going too… too… Sue you!"

Not April. She's not April. His eyes widened as he dropped the bottles, the bright liquids pooling over the ground to cover his feet. The polish was cold. "Ah! Shit!" Mikey leaped back and sprinted out of the Apartment, gripping the top of the window sill and flipping himself up onto the roof. He was always glad that April got the top floor of the building. Once outside and away from the screaming woman, he whipped out his phone and dialed the first number that came to his mind.

The phone rang several times, each monotone sound causing his chest to clench, as a tired and slurred voice answered with a, "e'lo?"

"Leo? Leo! I screwed up, I _really_ screwed up, dude!"

"Mike?" The change was instant with his brother's voice now intense, alert, and completely focused. "Where are you? I'm coming right now with emergency medical supplies. How much longer can you hold out?"

Mike blinked before shaking his head, "No, no! Not like that!"

"Then why are you calling me at six in the morning on a Saturday, Mikey?" Completely intense and concerned voice now warped into one of surly irritation. "What did you do now?"

"What's up with the accusation, dude?"

"You said you screwed up."

"Oh, right. I did. Well," Mikey turned on spot and peered over the ledge to the fire-escape just below him, where he knew that a freaked out woman was probably still going into hysterics, "I may have, or not, met April's, uh… One of April's friends? Wait, no. She doesn't have any friends. I think it was more like her mother or something. Maybe an Aunt or cousin. She saw me and started screaming and now totally knows who we are. Well, who I am. What's a voyeur?"

"Why were you peeping on ANY woman, Mikey? What have I told you about fantasizing with-"

"NO! I wasn't peeping! Honest! You have this totally wrong, dude. I just walked in her while she was in the bathroom and-"

"Have you no regard to other people's privacy? You don't just walk into a bathroom while it's occupied!"

"You guys do it to me all the time! We all do! We didn't even have a DOOR on the bathroom until we met April. Then she insisted that we had to put one up, remember?"

"That's different. I'll talk to Sensei about this and we'll meet up with April and this woman soon. Maybe we can spin the story so that you're just some creepy stalker of hers who has a rare skin disorder. The less this woman knows, the better."

"Yeah, I'm sure that we can pull that off! Can I change my name though? I think that Lancelot or Axel would sound way cooler."

Mikey was answered with the click and monotone ring as his brother hung up on him. He sighed and dangled his legs over the building's ledge with a pout towards the streets below. The colors of the nail polish mixed together created a rusted, reddish brown look that reminded him of dried blood. It was just a dream, before. He couldn't get his mind to stop wandering towards those disturbing images still passing through his mind, not when there was nothing but the busy city sounds to distract him. The last dream he has that was this vivid, this intense, was the same dream that ended up coming into existence as his family began to travel to that underground city.

"What a crazy morning," he mumbled to himself with an oncoming headache, "I hope this stupid dream doesn't come true too."

* * *

Juggling paper bags of groceries and a tangled mess of keys in her hand was not the way April O'neil wanted to start her morning. Casey followed up behind her with so many bags that his entire torso and face were blocked out by the bulging food masses. She honestly hoped that the sticks of beef jerky didn't end up his nose somehow. Her boyfriend whined as a boy would after being deprived of candy, "Come on, babe. Hurry up. My arms are falling asleep here!"

"I'm trying, I'm trying…" She inserted the key and wiggled it to the left, then to the right and jerked it to the left before she pushed her shoulder against the door, "It's not working!"

"No, you have to work it to the right a little more there, babe. Here, let me do it."

"No, I can do it just fine, Casey! I've done this before, but with less crap in my hands." Jimmying the lock a bit more, she managed to get the key stuck and swore profoundly under the irritation boiling in her stomach, "This is impossible! This entire situation is impossible! Why did she have to come here now? Why? She didn't even call first!"

"Here, just let me- There. See? That wasn't so hard," Casey held up one end of the now broken doorknob, "We needed to get another one anyways, right?"

"With what money? I'm broke now. That little floozy has now run me out of house _and_ money! How am I going to make this month's tuition bill at this rate? I don't even like this new journalism class, but it's better than trying over where I left off. You try getting a job after your only reference is Baxter Stockman."

"Don't ask me, babe. I'm just the guy who stands outside with a sign. Do you know how hard it is to not pee in those suits? They're hot as hell too!" Casey pushed his shoulder against the door with enough force to pop it open with the crackling wood from the frame, "Woops. I'll fix that. Ever think it's way too damn early to get groceries? You know how expensive the gas station is!"

"It's not like I could help it. How was I supposed to know she'd have a _party_ last night that would strip my apartment completely out of food? She's not sixteen anymore, I'm not going to tolerate this! She better have her chores done or I'm going to ground her from her phone and stupid shows!"

"Uh, babe- No offense, but you're not really her mother, and…"

"Don't you _dare_ side with her, Casey Jones! She's my- Ah! Splinter!" April's eyes popped as the familiar figure stood before her, flanked by his taller sons. "It's, ah… Not the best time to visit, I'm afraid. Here, Casey, put these away." She hefted up her entire armful on top of Casey's load and shuffled him off towards the kitchen, "Don't squish the bread!"

"Ms. O'Neil, I am sorry to intrude on you so early in the morning, but it seems that one of my own has revealed himself to, ah… A friend of yours?"

"No… No. Just- no!" She pinched the bridge of her nose as pressure began to build more, "How is she taking it? She hasn't shot anyone, has she?" Her eyes raked across the line of mutated teenage boys and only Michelangelo had the expression of guilt plastered across his face, "Mikey…"

"I didn't mean too! I thought she was you! Honest! She didn't shoot me, but I don't think that I won't get that most dazzling smile award from the city's mayor anytime soon. She chipped my tooth with some nail polish."

April sighed and moved over to the pouting turtle to open his mouth and look at the slightly chipped bottom of his middle incisor teeth, "This is just fine, Mikey. Don't be so dramatic. I'll give you some of my nail filers and you can file it down so that it's straight again."

"Cool!"

The other Turtles had already made themselves comfortable along the couch. April didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the uncomfortable and flustered look that Leo and Raph gave the room that was covered with very revealing and skimpy female undergarments.

Donatello seemed fascinated and took no shame in even picking up and twisting a pair around in his hands, "These are a lot more elastic than probably needed. You couldn't find any pairs small enough for you, April? I could look online, if you want. I already have your measurements."

She didn't even want to know how he got her hip measurements. "These are _not_ mine!" April snapped at him as she snatched away the frilly pink pair from his hands. "Stop smirking like that, Donatello! These are the pairs that my intrusive and immatu-"

"Hey! Don't elbow me like that!" Don yelped as he pushed back on his oldest brother a bit, "Very mature, Leonardo. I, for one, am not going to have the same reaction to woman's undergarments as if bamboo shoots were being pressed under my fingernails."

"You could at least be a little more thoughtful towards April's-"

"I was just teasing her. There's no need to get so uptight about this. You really need to-"

"Stop fighting! You both sound like a couple of middle aged hens!" Raph barked suddenly and pushed both of them off the side of the couch in a huff, "It's not like either of you can help being a pervert or a stuck up- Oh, sorry Sensei." Raph finished with a curt bow towards his father's directions, "Uh, you can go on with whatever, April."

The shuffled steps of Mikey behind her and Splinter sitting as poised as he could be in the weathered lazy boy gave her some regained confidence. Taking a deep breath, she stepped aside so that the smallest Turtle could sprawl himself across the three others; much to their displeasure. The annoyed complains were silenced by a look from their father, and she forced herself to take a step back to calm herself.

"I don't really know how to start this, but I know that since I've met you guys, well…" April wrung her hands at their expectant looks, "Let's just say that there have been the ups and downs to it. Not that I'd change meeting you guys for the world, but I don't want that type of life for my sister. She isn't strong enough to handle attacks from pajama wearing assassins or Purple Dragon gang members. I already knew what I was getting into when I decided, by my own will, to help you guys how I can. I've really gotten to care about all of you, but she's…"

Splinter raised a hand with a slow, understanding nod, "I understand, Ms. O'neil. We all fear for our family, and we all are very grateful for the help, patience, and understanding that you have given all of us. We could not ask for a better friend."

A sudden crash made all occupants of the living room jump, sending a sprawled Michelangelo onto the floor with a grunt, and causing the other three Turtles to reach for their weapons with intense looks in their eyes. April sighed as the door behind her leading into the bathroom creaked open, "You don't have the right to say what I can or can't handle! You're not my mother!"

"Well, if you didn't act like a spoiled, childish brat then I wouldn't have to fill in for your mother!" April snapped back as all the males in the room exchanged awkward, and uncomfortable looks. "Just trust me on this. You don't have to even bother with any of this, as soon as you get a job, you can just move on like you always do."

"Maybe I'm tired of moving around so much! Besides, just because that creepy voyeur guy is stalking you, doesn't mean that I can't handle myself."

"Don't you mean moving from bed to bed? Don't think that I don't know what you've been doing these past five years! Aunt Norma told me all about your affairs, and now you come here broke and bankrupt and expect me to flip all of your bills! Don't you know how inconsiderate that is?"

"Well, if you didn't-"

"Silence!" Splinter's voice boomed across the apartment, making all near him to shrink backwards unintentionally as the small bodied rat rose himself from the lazy boy with perfect grace, "I mean no disrespect towards either of you young women, but bickering amongst each other will solve nothing. April, I understand your need to protect your family, but you have to also learn that they are independent from you, and that you need to give them room to live their own lives. Just because we do not approve of their decisions, does not mean that we have the right from letting them make it," he finished with a pointed look towards his sons, who found the surroundings walls to be highly interesting at that moment.

"Can I come out then?" The voice asked behind the door with a nervous waver, "That ugly green guy isn't there anymore, is he?"

"Uh…" Mikey looked between his family members and shrugged, "I don't see him."

The bathroom door opened fully, to reveal a young woman with her wet hair down and face clear as vividly green eyes popped in their sockets before rolling into her head. Her body grew limp and she tumbled to the carpeted ground with an audible thump.

"I didn't think that we were _that_ ugly," Mikey grinned suddenly and turned towards April with bright eyes, "Can we keep her too? I need a girl member on my online Halo team."

"Does your family have a history of narcolepsy, April? Because I can probably rig up a MRI in the lair and give you both a check-up," Don flicked a sparkling bra towards a surly Raph, who batted it away like an annoying fly, "Because fainting that often can't be healthy."

April sighed as she moved the unconscious body, with the help of Casey, as they dragged her into the bedroom to plop her on the bed. She could hear several yelps and laughing from the living room but paid no mind to the teasing and sharp reprimands that followed. Pulling the body to the middle of the bed and folding the thick blankets around her, April tucked away a wet strand of the red hair with a small smile.

"I never know what to do with you, Robyn."

* * *

**A/N- And so there you are! I don't know any other story with this character, so I'm going completely on my own with her character. It's been quite the adventure. Heh heh heh. I'm REALLY distracted by Presidential debates, so I'll just leave this here then.**

**A/N/N- So because I had to look up how to spell a certain character's name, I stumbled upon a TMNTpedia website which showed me that I am not following canon. Woops. I couldn't remember Robyn being anywhere, so I just made her up myself. Ha ha ha ha ha! So this doesn't follow Canon, but I have put too much thought into this story to dump everything. So instead of the older sister, she will be the younger. There are a few more canon things that I read now that I think would be a good addition to this story, so I think I'll take some from Canon with that then. Surprisingly, Robyn is characterized as, "... an outgoing, but somewhat unorganized and irresponsible woman." . So I was coincidentally somewhat close? I'll stick to Canon as much as I can, but I'm putting my own spin on this. Next time I'll do my research, that's for sure! Heh heh heh.**


	2. Chapter 2

_Just for future reference, there will be NO romance in this. So ya'll can take a deep breath of relief. Heh heh heh. This will probably be the only main chapter centered around Robyn specifically, I just needed to initiate her and who she is. That sort of thing. I hope to have the action pick up considerably in either the next chapter, or the chapter after that. Why am I saying this? Because I'm tired and need to go to bed. Hope you enjoy!_

* * *

Mist fogged the cold paned window as she breathed on it, carving a lopsided barn in the dewed moisture. Even years later, she still missed her home. Her childhood. Pouting outwards to nothing and ignoring the bustling baboon that her sister called a boyfriend, she curled up right next to the apartment's outer window and stared moodily into the brightly lid streets before.

The entire day composed of her having to listen to that bogus story about those weirdoes and how they got covered in some goo and mutated into whatever they were. Why did her sister always have to hang out with losers? Even her first job was a total hitch and April still had the gall to lecture her about what she's been doing all these years. It wasn't her fault that she preferred the company of more distinguished and wealthy men. The expensive gifts and free room was always a plus too. April was just a stick in the mud, probably never even went to a club in her life. Freaky mutants or not, she bet that they probably had super dull and lame lives. Which makes sense since it's not like they could go anywhere in public, except maybe the circus.

"How long are you going to sit there and pout? I told you that dinner was ready five minutes ago."

Her sister was so annoying, always nagging her whenever she wanted to be alone. It's not like she even wanted to be here, she could be lavished in some high class hotel if her former boyfriend didn't kick her out because his wife found out about them. Life was seriously lame sometimes.

"Robyn, stop ignoring me! You haven't eaten all day today, and don't blame the bad looks of my friends on your poor appetite."

"I'm not hungry, and if it wasn't for the way they looked, it would be because they smell so bad. I can't believe that they live in a _sewer_! That's so gross. Don't you even notice that they're all… green and stuff? Don't even get me started on that gerbil guy."

"Rat. Hamato Splinter, whom you will talk about with respect, is a rat." April sighed as she shuffled towards Robyn and sat down on the wind sill next to her, "I know it can be a lot to take in at once, it took me around a week to get used to them. I'm actually surprised you're doing so well."

Robyn didn't look up from the window and could hear the fake enthusiasm a mile away in her sister's voice. She sounded just like their mother and it made her tone sharp, "You don't have to try so hard to sound like her, you know. I'm not twelve."

"No, you're not."

The television flickered to life and Robyn could hear the cheers of some sports game going on. She didn't even have to look towards the noises to know that Casey was probably sprawled across the couch with dinner served in his lap on three paper plates so that it didn't leak past the material.

Her sister patted her shoulder hesitantly before saying, "I know that I left for school when you were only seventeen, and maybe I should have stayed, I'm still not sure. Robyn, I didn't go to college just to abandon you and dad at home, I left to get an education, so that I can help support the family. With mom being gone and only you two there at the house, I can understand that you were lonely and probably mad at me. But I'm almost thirty and you're getting up there in age, even if you don't act it," April tried to tease with no positive effect. "Robyn?"

"Then why didn't you ever come back? Was it because of them?" The last word was full of bitterness that forced itself through her lips, "You didn't care then, and you don't now. So don't try to bullshit your way to making me feel sorry for you or forgive you. Because I won't."

"I never asked you to do that, and I don't expect you to either. I just…" She sighed again the same way Dad would after one of them would break the tractor or forget to clean up after the pigs, "I just want you to understand that I didn't forget you, and that I _do_ care, even if you don't believe me. Now, there's some dinner up, it's only macaroni and cheese, so it's not anything special. Help yourself."

Her sister rose and shuffled off to join her boyfriend on the couch. Robyn noticed that her sister never answered her question. Not that she cared anyways. Standing and walking towards the kitchen with her chin thrown out and shoulders held back, she crossed slowly in front of the television to earn her an angry response of, "You're in the way, man! I'm missing the receivers catch!"

Dishing herself up a small bowel and grabbing a can of beer, she headed towards the window, balancing the food as she opened the window and stepped out into the cold air. Robyn could hear her sister's muffled protests as she slammed down the window and scaled up the iron ladder. The concrete roof was chilling to her bones and even the light jacket she had on was no comfort against the winds. Popping open the can and taking a swig, she scarfed down the cheesy noodles before they become cold, which wouldn't take long in this nightly weather.

"Aren't you being a little harsh on April, dude?"

The sudden voice made her choke as she coughed to dislodge the hazarding noodles from her throat. A hand slapped her in the back a couple of times, helping her clear her throat as she threw the half-empty can towards the voice behind her, "Don't you have something better to do than bother me? Like eat worms, or whatever you weirdoes eat."

"Worms are okay, but they don't fill me up like a good old fashioned pizza does." Blue eyes were bright even in the night air as a green hand snatched the can in mid-flight, "Thanks for the drink, dude."

"Whatever," Robyn grumbled as she continued to now pick at her cold and sticky macaroni noodles, "Why were you eavesdropping on us anyways? Don't you know that's rude?"

"I know like, two girls. When another one comes along, I like to get to know her more, if you know what I mean," he winked at her, much to her disgust. The jovial turtle laughed at her expression, "I'm just joking! You're too old for me anyways."

"Am not! I'm only twenty-two! Unless you're like ten or something," She added as a disturbed after-thought.

"Nah, I'm nineteen. Almost twenty though. You're still old compared to me."

"Asshole."

The turtle grinned, his teeth large and bright. "Thank you, I've been practicing."

Robyn finished the cold noodles, forcing them down her throat with distaste but oddly not completely revolted by the mutant before her, whom she watched with interest. He seemed to have no qualms with finishing her opened beer with relish and smacking his lips with an obnoxiously annoying quality to the sound. She tilted her head and drew up her legs to her chest, wrapping her arms around them to stay in a ball of warm to try to preserve what heat she could.

"If you're a turtle, then how can you stand this? You should be near hypothermia if you're cold blooded. Can you stick your head in your shell? How do you move if you can't bend your front? Do you ever tip over when you sit down? Can you stand back up if you're laying down, or do you have to rock back and forth to do that? My great Aunt Norma sometimes has to do that, because she's so hunchbacked. She butchers goats in her basement, even with her bad back. How come you don't have a beak like a regular turtle? I don't see why you-"

"Hold on, hold on! Let me catch up before you bedazzle me with more questions, dude. Uh, let's see…" his face scrunched up in thought as he mentally counted off his fingers and said, "We're not completely cold blooded, like a mixture of the two. No. Magic. If I'm drunk. Only if I'm too lazy to flip to my feet. You're great aunt sounds badass and Ninja worthy, and as for the beak thing? No idea. I blame weird mutation thing. What else were you going to ask?"

"I don't see why you guys have to live in a sewer. That's so gross, man. Can't you just live outside of the city and make trips once in a while for food or something? At least then you could walk around during the day, right?"

"Uh…" The turtle scratched his head, right beneath the orange bandana that was adorned across his eyes. "Because that's how it is? I don't think too much about that sort of thing. Mainly because it doesn't really matter, in the end. It doesn't matter where we go, we still won't be accepted by people, so why leave? It's not like walking around freely in the country will make people accept us. They still won't know we exist, and we'll still know that. That and I really hate mosquitos. There's never enough of that watery pink lotion stuff around when you get all bitten up."

Robyn laughed, not quite sure why, but the reaction seemed to please the turtle as he grinned widely. For being a mutated turtle who has lived in the sewers for his entire life, the guy seemed pretty happy about everything. Which made no sense to her, since she knew that most people couldn't stand their lives, and most of them actually have a lot to live for. Taking off her jacket and tossing it towards him, she grinned to match his and dropped the bowel in his lap. "I don't know about you, but I'm going inside. You can have this to warm up a bit; you're getting a little blue around the mouth." Standing up and brushing off her pants, she popped her back and turned away from him, pausing in thought. "You know, for an ugly turtle guy, you're not that bad. I guess I can kinda see why April likes you guys so much."

Putting on the jacket with flourish and a bright face, he seemed to not care about the pink frills as he flipped up to his feet with the jacket sliding up past his forearms. She giggled at his dramatics as he turned around with his arms wide, like he was showing off at a beauty pageant. "You like? It's the latest fashion of this season! Totally having that Jay-lo persona going on."

"You have serious issues, uh… What was your name again?"

His grin couldn't be wider and happier as he chirped, "The names Michelangelo, but a pretty lady like you can call me Mikey."

"Right. Don't rip the jacket. I paid good money for that at Bloomingdale's!" She called back as she hurried out of the chilled night air and back into the warmth of the apartment. Yanking the window back open and stepping through, her foot caught on the edge of the sill and she tumbled forward to the ground with a pained grunt. There was laughter behind her and she made sure to flip the bird in that direction as she straightened herself up from the carpeted floor. Why were all the men that April associated with so annoying?

"Looks like you got April's big feet. Why is your hair so red anyways? It looks like Kool-Aid."

"I dyed it, duh. April should dye hers too; it's getting kinda grey near her roots. Not that she believed me when I told her though," Robyn peeked into her sister's room and opened the door fully at the lack of life inside, "Weird. Maybe they went out? I bet my sister's taste in clothing has never changed. She would always wear the most old looking and bulky clothes when we were younger. Something about saving money, I don't remember."

She turned on the light and made her way to the closet, taking no precaution as she yanked it open and clawed through the faded and worn clothing strung up in the closet. Nose wrinkling with distaste, she made a noise of disgust as she tossed several articles of clothing onto the bed. "Where did she get all of this stuff? Goodwill?"

"Probably. That or a used store. Did you know that she actually owns her own used store?" Michelangelo asked from the bed, where he was sprawled across lazily. "This is the second one she's opened. The first one got burned down by this Ninja Clan who hates us because we're awesome and kick their asses all the time."

"Yeah, yeah. April's always so great with money and all that." Another striped polo shirt that would possibly look good on a golf course full of eighty year old men, some shapeless dresses, and a few plain shirts were all that Robyn could salvage from the closet. The rest she was going to make sure to take to a consignment store to sell, if they would take the clothes. "Is this all she has? I thought that she would have more than this."

"Nope. It's not easy to pick up from having everything that you know destroyed. I know that from experience too," he said as he tossed a shirt back at her, "You shouldn't be so hard on her. I know I said that before, but I'm serious! I get what it's like to be all mad because somebody you know goes and ditches you for a long time. I had a brother leave for over a year, and even though I forgave him and stuff, that doesn't take away how much it sucked while he was gone. I mean, we rarely heard from him and the whole family always had this thought that maybe he died, but we'd just never say it, because we didn't want anybody else to know that we were thinking it."

Jumping back and bouncing on the bed besides him, she sighed and crossed her arms over her chest out of habit. "She just left me alone to take care of dad! He's always been a hard-ass to get along with, especially since mom left. He's always liked her more, because she was more _responsible_ and _independent_. So when she left, all I had to hear when she was gone was how it would have been better off if I actually did something with my life and went to college like her. Not like I could've."

"Why not?"

Robyn opened her mouth to respond, then backpedalled and sat up from the bed, her feet hanging over the edge stiffly. What was she doing? Ten minutes of knowing the guy, and she was about ready to go and spill her guts out all over him. He wasn't even human! Deciding that he probably had some kind of mutant charm that was creepy, she stood up and buried herself into the closet again.

"Robyn?"

"Ugh! The whole 'walking away' was me saying that I'm ignoring you now. I barely even know you. Like I'm going to tell you my whole sap story. If you really want to know, just ask April. She'll tell you how much of a screw up I am."

The dust clogged her nose and made her eyes water, although she couldn't remember having sensitive sinuses before. Mikey said something that she couldn't hear over her shuffling of dusty boxes within the closet. Most of them held more old clothes, and some had shoes or tattered pieces of paper attached to notebooks worn out and weathered. Sifting through some of those notebooks, she came across a thicker journal that was bound in leather and in far better condition than the other pieces she found. Carefully pulling the journal open and skimming through the frail pages, her eyes widened as she stood up from her crouch, cracking her head against the top of the closet and swearing.

"Robyn?"

"How dare she! She has something of Uncle Augie's this recent? Look at this date, Mikey! Look! It was of only four years ago! Do you know the last time I last heard about my Uncle? Well, do you?" She all but threw the journal at him, the anger boiling in her chest not directed at him in particular, but as an easy target. He simply shrugged with a wide eyed look and shook his head, looking too tongue tied to speak.

"_Ten_ years! Last time I saw Uncle Augie was when I was twelve and he was going off for one of his adventures that Daddy always hated," she pouted as she softly touched the bound cover of the journal, "I can't believe that April knew something about him and didn't tell me! She knew where I was, I know that she had my number somewhere."

"Dude, uh- Robyn, she was _really_ busy. I mean, for a while there was barely a week that went by that there wasn't some crazy world-take-over, alien invasion, or gang war going on. It's not like she had much time to try to find out where he was. I know she swore to do it after she found that journal, which by the way, is a freaking awesome story. If you believe me, that is. How much do you know about alternate dimensions and magical amulets?"

"Just stop talking! I don't care about what stupid excuses she has. As soon as she gets home from wherever, I am _so_ going to yell at her." Pivoting on the spot and marching out of the room, she directed her anger towards the bathroom door and slammed it shut as she sat on the toilet with the sink water running to drown out her sniffling.

There was a slight tap on the door that was followed by a scraping sound as she pictured Mikey sliding down the door on the other side, to sit on the floor. He began to talk, and she had to turn off the water to hear him properly, "-ot good with sort of thing. Even though I'm way better than Raph. He'd just call you a crybaby or something." Maybe she should just turn back on the water. "Not that I think you're one or anything. When Leo went off to Central America, I was really upset for awhile. I tried to not show it in front of the others, because I didn't want to upset them and already knew that they were all upset too. I spent a lot of the time outside, just staring up at the moon," he chuckled from the other side of the door, "That's totally cheesy, but it's true. I had this weird thought that if I watched the sky, that Leo could be looking at the same spot I was, then I'd get all warm and think he was there with me. We're not really alike at all, totally different if you ask somebody who doesn't know us, so we probably never got to talk like we should've."

Robyn rolled out some toilet paper to dab her eyes, "Where is this all going?"

"Even though you and April aren't that alike, doesn't mean that you're not close. Sometimes I'd just go up and cry like I was a little kid. Don't tell my brothers that though, they'll give me a bunch of shit for it. That and Leo would get all guilty and try to clean my room or something. He's weird."

"Don't know why you're telling me all this. I don't even know you," Robyn rolled up the toilet paper and spun it around in her nose to sop up some of the snot, "I'm not even crying."

"My dad said once that we make the best decisions that we can, with what we know. April didn't know what would happen if she left, but she did think that it was the best thing to do at the time. I don't know why Leo left, really. I still don't. At the time I almost hated him for just leaving like that for some stupid excuse like, 'becoming a better leader'. That was the best decision he knew, though. It's not like he knew what was going to happen in the future because of it. So, like I said before, don't be too hard on her, Robyn. She only did what she thought was right, even if she was wrong."

Robyn nodded silently, not thinking ahead to how he wouldn't be able to see her. Michelangelo seemed to understand though as she heard him stand up and knock again on the door, "I'm going to head on home now. Just think over what I said, okay? You don't have to listen to me or anything, I know that I don't know what the hell I'm talking about half the time anyways," he finished with a bubbling laugh that was contagious, as she found herself giggling despite herself.

She would have thanked him, but her nose was too full of mucus and she doubted that he would understand her anyways. Curling up on the pot slightly and opening the journal once again, she began to read on the first page. The sloppy handwriting was everywhere and curved far too much on the letters that made it hard for her to read, but she managed to stumble her way through the past few pages. She rubbed her eyes, the tired and itchy orbs making her sleepy.

Michelangelo was probably right, even if she didn't want to believe him. He may be green and have the personality of the Pillsbury Dough Boy, but maybe she'll just listen to him. Just this once.

* * *

**A/N- I hope that this story doesn't have a billion lines going through it, because that's what I'm seeing. I'd really appreciate feedback and all that for this story, just because. Heh heh heh. I am so heading to bed now. I hope that you enjoyed the chapter, if not, then why are you reading it? HA HA HA HA HA!**


	3. Chapter 3

_Okay, so after freaking out that I didn't have these facts right, I realized that I couldn't watch the cartoon again, and Wikipediea was a dead end, but THEN I remembered TMNTpedia. Obviously. So I actually made a few modifications here. So, now that I'm sure that I know what I'm doing, and that I have a handle on things, please enjoy this very late update. I'll update more quickly now that NaNoWriMo is finished, and I don't have to pop out 50,000 words anymore, because I already finished my goal. Hoorah!_

* * *

Steam, hot and light, wafted up it's fumes and spread all about the small apartment. If anybody knew how to seep tea well, it was Leonardo. His father taught him well, the ancient Japanese techniques passed down from the generations. That and Google was always a great help for the learning process, not that he'd ever admit to that.

A Good Morning America special played on the television set before him, but Leo paid no mind to the ramblings of the program, focusing his attention on the variety of items cast out from the main, master bedroom. The majority were clothes, but he found himself in need of dodging several shoes and books, even a lamp, that was thrown in his general direction. His tea was getting cold, and his patience was waning.

"You didn't think to tell me? How? How! If you cared about me or anybody in this family in all, you would act less like a hermit and actually contact us once in awhile? Don't you know how to use a phone? Or Skype?" Accusations flew like burning arrows as Robyn launched another clothes hanger out of the room in anger, missing April, but almost landing in his tea. He scooted his teacup away from the impact with care, steady hands not spilling a drop.

"Going to college is _not_ living like a hermit! And what was I going to tell you? 'Oh, I'm sorry Robyn, it appears that Uncle Augie has been zapped to an alternate dimension with giant insects possibly using his body as a nest for their eggs'! I'm sure that would have gone over _quite_ well."

"You could have, I don't know, lied!" Robn spread her arms out for emphasis, as if what she spoke was the most plausible explanation. Leonardo took another sip of his bitter, steaming drink.

"What would be the point in that? I don't even know where he is! Didn't you read to the end of that journal? It ends at the hornet dimension, or wherever we were. I don't know where he went after that. It's not like I know how to trace the emission particles of that cube!"

"Didn't you go to college for that stuff? You were always hoarding away in your room with books about all the junk. You could figure it out!"

"You think I haven't been trying? Apart from having my life threatened every other week," April turned to Leo with an instant morph of her rage into an apologetic nod, "Not that it really bothers me. Just a minor distraction, really. But besides that, college, part time at Mr. Taco, and running the store, I just don't have the time to research into translating the characters on Uncle Augie's puzzlebox."

"You still have it?" Robyn's head snapped up from where she was digging through the closet again, looking for something else to throw, "Why didn't you say so earlier? I'll sit down with that, what was his name again? Donald? I'll sit down with him and make him do it. You said he was good with that sort of stuff, right?"

"Donatello. His name is Donatello. He's the one that has it. And, Donald? Didn't you study the Renaissance era in high school? Oh, that's right, you dropped out," April scowled with a tongue of venom that even made Leonardo flinch back. He couldn't remember ever being so viscous with his brothers, although he never had a reason to be so venomous.

"April, this isn't helping. I really think that we should-"

"Of course you bring that up! You always bring up at how much of a failure I am! You never even care about my side," Robyn interrupted him as she promptly through a small figuring of a half-naked fairy. Leo noted that it was a Birthday Christmas from Mike a few years back, and made sure to dive and catch the fragile piece before it broke. "You don't even listen."

"I don't listen? What about you? I warned you about joining those, those... Hoodlums! All they ever did was pick up ever disease known to man and drugs. Don't even get me on the underage drinking! Not once when I was home, did you ever listen to my warnings!"

It was like watching a soap opera composed of the female versions of himself and a brother. Mostly likely Raphael, by the way Robyn could heave up more items to chuck across the room. Leonardo wasn't quite sure if he should be amused, or horrified that a woman he knew so well could have such a temper. If he knew anything, it was that family could always hit every secret button without fail. He just hoped to never push any of April O'Neil's buttons.

"So what? Everybody drank and smoked pot. Don't act like you're so high and mighty with your GPA and job! Dad always wanted me to be just like you. As soon as you left, all I heard was, 'April would do this', or 'April would do that'. It was never about me. He never looked at me, because he always saw you. You were always his favorite," Robyn finished with a clogged nose as she sat miserably in the bedroom with her face cradled in her open palms. "You were always everybody's favorite."

April sighed, a sound so familiar that he cranked his head to each side to look for one of his brothers, getting into some sort of mess that he had to drag them out of. Nobody. Just April and her sister. Just an apartment full of estrogen and emotions. Leonardo sipped the last his tea, it was cold.

"I wasn't Mom's favorite, everybody knew that you were always Mom's favorite." Tone now soft and reassuring, April glided into the room like a mother bird swooping down to her chick, "I don't think that you are a failure, I may have said or thought that before, but I was young. Well, younger. I don't think that now," she finished with a hug as she petted her sister's vibrant red hair, "You're not a failure."

Robyn wailed, which caused April to wail, which in turn made Leo freeze with the porcelain fairy still clutched in his hands. They were crying and hugging and apologizing. It was like a war zone. Standing and silently edging across the room to retrieve a journal which lay eagle-spread across the lazy-boy, he closed the book, placed the fairy down, and gradually left the room. Leaving the emotionally distraught women behind him, he escaped to the rooftops.

He was so fortunate to have brothers. Rarely was their sobbing or consoling, more or less a good wrestling match would suffice. Occasionally he would have to have a heart to heart, most likely with Mikey, but that usually ended quickly and with less tears. Of course, when real emotions got out of hand, Leo was also grateful that he could simply send one of his brothers, over even himself over to April. She always knew how to console them, emotionally. She always had that special touch.

The morning air was cold and crisp, but refreshing as he sped along the rooftops with his phone in hand and the familiar number already dialed. His mouth tightened to a thin line as it rang on and on, paranoid fear began to creep at his chest, as it always did if a brother didn't answer, and was relieved by a curt, "Now? You're calling now?" Loud pops and sizzling in the background. "Little busy here, Leo. I'm hanging up on you now."

"Wait! What are you doing over there?" The sounds grew to resemble small, minor explosives going off. His brow knotted with irritation, "What are you blowing up? It better not be more of Mikey's doll collection. You know how he is about those things."

"No, no. That was last week. This week it's ice-bombs. I'm sure that I can sneak dozens of these into the Purple Dragon's refrigerators that they store all of their alcohol in. The warehouse on fifty-seventh and Elmwood would be a good start," more popping and the screech of metal being pushed across a floor, "Shit!"

"Don? Don!"

"It's fine, I have the blast contained. Saved by the bell. Literally," Don whislted lowly on the other side of the phone, "Raph is going to be besides himself after he sees what I did to his Liberty Bell replica. Does he like his eggs scrambled or over easy?"

"Scrambled," Leo huffed into the receiver as he lifted a manhole cover and tossed it to the side, "I'm in the sewers now, just under Johnson. I'll be there soon, but I wanted to give you a heads up first about this Uncle Augie business."

"What do you want to know?"

The darkness was welcome after the bright, piercing light, and Leonardo fell into a regular running pattern as he made his way through the musky sewers. "Everything. But let's just start with that puzzlebox, you're the one that has it, right?"

"I've tinkered with it a bit. Didn't get a response lately though. Funny fact though, the characters that are scribbled along the side of the cube, well, let's just say that I've seen those same characters all along the walls of those Underground Cities. You know, the ones which held Quarry and the others?"

"I remember. What's that mean, then? That they were created in those cities? I suppose the crystals could be used as a source of power, but that doesn't explain the ability to travel through dimensions."

"I have a few theories on that, but none of them are relevant to this conversation, and I don't want to go into full detail. That would take too long," Don finished with a shuffling of papers.

"If you already know the origins of the cube, why haven't you been able to trace, or track it back to where it was created?" Close to the lair now, he picked up his pace and held the phone further away from his mouth to cut down on the heavy panting. One perverted commented from Mike was all he needed to make sure that he wasn't breathing to heavily into the receiver.

"I've set about trying to translate the puzzlebox, so that I can give it more direction for the energy to actually use it. Right now it's as good to me as a car battery. I just need to figure out how to make it run."

"Alright. So give whatever research notes you've made on the translation process to April, I think she took a few Linguistic courses, so she may be able to help you with that. Don't tinker with it too much without knowing what you're doing, I don't want you sucked into another dimension again."

"Roger that, Captain Obvious, I will try _so_ hard to keep that in mind while I work." More cracks and creaks from the other side, along with an obnoxious tapping that grated Leo's teeth together.

"What are you doing?"

Donatello laughed, "Tinkering."

Before he could respond, Leo was met with the monotone ring of a flat line. Almost flying the rest of the way home, with his feet barely touching the cold concrete, he thought that maybe it wasn't too late to do a trade in. A sister for his snarky, smartass brother.

* * *

"You want me to do what, again?" Michelangelo held the mysterious cube in his hand, the chilled rock surface and curious marking made his fingers twitch with anticipation. "I don't get it."

"I'm not to sure of what this is myself. What I do know, is that for some reason you have a spiritual connection to this puzzlebox, and anything else that has to do with those Underground Cities. So," Don waved his hands about, as if conducting a great orchestra, "Do your thing."

"My thing? I'm not Yoda here. I don't have power over the Force or anything," Mikey rotated the cube in his hands, "Whatever _my thing_ is, I'm not feeling it."

"Well, try to start feeling it soon, because from the Leo's tone, I'd deduce that Robyn is still hysterical and driving April up the wall. So, instead of pouring more countless hours into translation, I've figured to try a new route and go for the more spiritual approach."

"By having me what? Zap this thing with my mental powers? I don't even know what I'm supposed to have it do. It's not like I'm some kind of weird key that-"

"That's it! I picked this off from one of the Underground Cities." Rushing in a sudden surge of urgency, Donatello ripped across his lab, throwing haphazard junk left and right. Mikey stood at a safe distance away, dancing out of the path of the flying pieces. "That Entity character used this to control the Earth. I'm sure you remember him, he was the last of the Y'Lantians and had the skin complexion of a snowman."

"No way I could forget, dude." Catching the bright blue amulet that was tossed his way, he wasted no time to slip it around his neck and reflect his bulging, equally blue eye in the surface. "So, what now? Does this unlock my mental Force or something? Because as cool as that is, I don't see it happening."

"Don't be so pessimistic. I'm sure something will happen." Poised with notebook and pen, Don sat himself in his office chair and spun around to face him with an expression similar to that of a mad scientist waiting for his invention to literally come to life. It was like a bad horror movie.

Put on the spot and shifting nervously, Mikey fiddled with the amulet and avoided his brother's expectant watch. Normally adoring being the center of attention, he now regretted it as he sighed, twisting the amulet around with no effect. "Is this, 'I'm sure something will happen'. A good or bad thing, really? Because last time you said that, Klunk coughed up Jolly Ranchers for a week."

"This is different. You're not Klunk and I'm not making you ingest anything."

"Yet," Mikey's mouth tightened warily as he swore the amulet was becoming heavier by the minute, "And I'm pretty sure this is how Klunk felt. Poor kitty. Why did I let you experiment on my cat again?"

"You didn't," Don said.

"Don't make him wear jewelery now! We barely managed to get him out of wearing dresses," Leonardo panted from the doorway, "Not that wearing dresses is a bad thing, Mikey."

"Of course not. It's just socially awkward," Don spoke up from his seat, "Because our social lives are so prominent. But besides this, glad you could join us. Being the more spiritually sound of the group, what's your opinion on using a spiritual trace through the puzzlebox?"

"Where's Raph? Wait, spiritual trace? I'm not sure," Leo offered as he settled down and caught his breath, "I've traced you all before spiritually, so I suppose it's possible. Is that why you're making Mikey wear jewelery? Don, please don't give him any more ideas about becoming a wizard."

"Raph's in the bathroom and it's not like a wizard. It's like a Mage, you know, from Skyrim? And it's not jewelery, it's an amulet. A magical amulet that I'm supposed to use my mind powers to control and open the puzzlebox, to show us where that Uncle Augie dude is," Mikey said as he exhaled on the amulet to fog it up, and then cleaned it with his elbow. "See? I can see my face!"

"Don, what did I say about putting these kinds of ideas into his head? He's going to start talking to the bread again."

"I didn't realize that I wasn't raising our child right, because we all know that he can't have a thought on his own without-"

"I wasn't talking to the bread! I was trying to blast it across the room with my Dragon Speech. You know, Fus Ro Dah? Nobody?" Mikey shrugged at the perplexed looks he received from his brothers, "Nothing? You guys seriously need to play that game."

"Okay, so he may have played too many marathons to the point of liquifying his brain," Don began, "But I still stand by what I was saying before about him having full responsibility for-"

"Ladies, ladies, what the hell's the problem? I can hear you all the way from the john." The low rumble of Raphael cut through the room and argument, "Why is Mikey wearing jewelery? You know he's going to start getting into April's makeup after this, right?"

"He already has," Leo added with a grimace, "We already have a hard enough time keeping him from being the laughing stock of the Foot clan, if Karai sees-"

"Karai? The Foot? Why the hell should you care what they think? If they don't like that our brother dresses up like a weirdo with make-up than that can go fall on their swords," Raph crossed his arms.

"It's distracting on the battlefield when you hear them snickering behind their-"

"The whole point of being on a battlefield is to not be distracted by unimportant details," Don interrupted, "Both of you are taking this too seriously. Obviously he was just screwing around to make you both paranoid that he's ga-"

"Will you both stop interrupting me!"

"Don't even bring that up, Don. It's not funny. You know the rumors flying around the PD's."

Distracted by the silver gleam of the amulet, the heated arguments whittled away to the same effect that an annoying fly would have, as Mikey focused on his own reflection. Distorted but clear, he stared until all surrounded sounds and sights drowned out and the only item in his mind was the amulet. Heavy and chilled in his hands, a tingling sensation developed underneath the polished metal as a blue light flooded his vision, enveloping his mind. Body frozen, as if submerged in icy water, he had no ability to fight back as his consciousness was ripped from him in a haze of light.

* * *

**A/N- I am sure people remember that the Underground City was destroyed. I have an explanation for that, since a lot of the Turtles Lair looked like the city in a lot of ways, before it was destroyed. I'm only bringing this up because, not only the plot, but also because I'm at least _trying_ to keep to Canon. Trying. No promises. Heh heh heh.**


	4. Chapter 4

_I know it's been awhile, but I have a huge Trilogy coming up that will be my final work, so I'm kind of hurrying to finish up the rest of my work. Since this is FINALLY in the scenes where lots of action will commence, I will most likely write a lot on this quite often, so expect many updates! I give a shout out to ChatterBOXX who helped inspire me to post and write on, along with my other close buddies. Heh heh heh._

* * *

People were screaming. Wispy figures, color stripped away to only the luminescent hue of blue, scattered about him. It was hard for him to focus in the chaos as bodies pressed into him in their attempt to flee. From what, he couldn't tell.

Faces were lost as he tried to gather his bearings, but his body was not his own. He would think to turn, but his head would stand still. His hands would move to his neck, grasping something there. An image of a blue crystalline necklace graced before his eyes and he remembered. The pendent. The pendent is what brought him here.

Echoing down the man tunnels circling above his head, the body he was in looked upwards at the impressive array of stairways that led up and out of sight in the dark chasm. The man prayed, Michelangelo could hear and feel the rumble of the man's chest. Blue light erupted from between his fingertips with such force that new, ear-shattering screeches erupted. They were climbing the walls. Black figures, twisted in body and with eyes sealed shut by a light-less ooze. There was an experiment that went wrong. Memories ran through the man's head. How his King, a man he loved, took to himself the power of the blue light. Of the eternal light. He forced this power unto others and turned them into those creatures. Now this man hated the King. Mikey could feel that hatred, it burned into his bones.

"Hey, fish-stick! You can't just stand there, we've got to go! They're coming up fast! Move it!" Hot hands pressed themselves at the base of his back, rushing him forward. The man craned his head and Mike recognized the face. It was a familiar face. Green, sharp eyes with a round nose and narrow face. Flaming red hair. Mikey knew that man.

The man ran then, with the red-haired adventurer at his heels. Only stone and the blue light led the way, making a path through the screeching, twisted creatures that pursued them. They were afraid of the light. It hurt them. But the people were drawn to this light and they followed. They followed them into a great room were there was a great horde of people all pressed together.

"You designed it. Use it!" The adventurer was waving his hands, leather straps flailing about from his clothing. His packs were all in shreds, now. "We have to get these people out of here!"

The man brought the crystal up to the box, which caused a tidal wave of blue light pooling out from the pendent, into the ruins that were scribed into the faces of the giant box. It stood stationary up to the adventurer's chest, but when activated, the box seemed to expand in size and become greater than the people surrounding it. The great object engulfed them all in the light, swallowing them whole.

* * *

"Don't slap him so hard, Raph. We're not trying to give him a concussion." Bright lights in his eyes again. "His pupils are dilating, he's waking up. Give him some air, people! This isn't the time to suck out all of the oxygen from him."

"Shut up, Don! I know what I'm doing. Mike's taken harder hits than this before."

"This isn't some scuffle with a PD. This is some mystical light from an ancient source of power. There's no telling how his body or mind may react."

"Both of you quiet down." Stormy eyes locked with his own and there was a cold drop on his heated forehead. "Mike? Come on, I'll help you up." Iron hands helped him to sit up, his head still swimming in the light from before. Everything pounded.

"I saw him," Mike croaked as he clutched his brother's arm, "Leo, I _saw_ Uncle Augie! That, that thing is some kind of weird teleportation thing. I, I don't know. But I remember a lot of stuff that shouldn't be in my head. That pendent is like some weird USB for memories. I don't know how else to describe it."

"We need to get to April's," Leo said, "They're probably done with their emoting by now."

"Emoting?" Don asked with an amused smirk, "I thought that you believed that sharing interpersonal thoughts and emotions was simply bonding and becoming more in-tuned with that other person."

"No, well- yes. But that's not the same. This was empty tissue boxes, smeared faces, and that hugging sort of thing. Emoting," Leo even tried to give an example using his hands as a bad visual, "See?"

"Whatever. They're probably done with all that shit by now. Let's just go already." Raph all but plucked Mikey up from the back of his carapace and pushed him out of the door, "Times a'wasting."

"A'wasting? Nobody says that. Hold on, I just need to grab my bag. I'll be right behind you guys, I need to pack some things," Don called out from his lab as the group left him in the dust. "Don't do anything without me!"

"We better hurry before Dr. Nutjob back there decides that he wants to stick Mikey's head under some rotating magnet," Raph muttered quiet enough for only the two brothers at his side. They didn't have time to respond as the three of them broke off at a brisk pace as soon as their feet left the confines of the lair. Leonardo looked back, as if he forgot something. "Don is coming and no you didn't leave the damn stove on. Besides, Splinter's home. He'll manage whatever paranoid issue you just thought of."

"Yeah, Leo. Just chill, we have some awesome news to tell the girls!" Mikey skipped ahead of them, jovial and as bubbly as a baby bluejay in spring. "I call dibs on telling them."

Leonardo only sighed and followed his brothers through the tunnel, slowing down only when he heard the labored breathing of the fourth coming up on their rear. Don said nothing, only raising his duffel bag triumphantly with a wide grin and falling into place behind them. With the group finally together, Leo took head and went up the first manhole cover that he could. They were always fastest on the roofs, overlooking the city. The fresh air was always good for the blood flow.

Their feet were quick and they made the journey to April's apartment in good time. She sat with her younger sister in front of the television with a big bowl of popcorn between the two of them. Raph and Mike struggled to get in through the window, their shells interlocking in their haste. Don called out, "Timber!" With a sturdy front thrust kick, he pushed his brothers through the window and showed no sympathy as he walked over the top of them, much to their cries of outrage.

Leo chose to show more dignity than his brothers, and gracefully stepped into the apartment and silently closed the window behind him. Movements and actions were always silent with the young leader. His brothers swarmed the couch, infesting the females as their parasitic urges devoured the popcorn within less than a minute. April seemed to not care, already turned to an indifference as she knew that there was no fighting the hungry teenage Ninja.

"Oh, seriously? Can't you tell that there's a person, like, _right here_?" Robyn asked in a frustrated annoyance, "Get off me, you leeches!"

Mikey grinned as he slung his legs over her lap and used April as an unwilling back rest, "You will totally be singing a different tune when you hear what I figured out."

"I did, or we," Don corrected, "But mostly me. I'm the one who still had the pendent, and you guys are always complaining about how I save everything. Now you know that I was always right."

"When the hell are you going to use five barrels of Bag Balm? It's not like we have a shit load of cows or anything," Raph fought for comfort on the couch and ended up elbowing April in the chest, "Sorry. Don, move your ass!"

"That's it! All three of you, off my couch. Now. This is hereby thenceforth MY area. When I-"

"Or me," Robyn added.

"Fine. When I or my sister are sitting here, that leaves no room for the rest of you. Begone!" April shooed them away as if they were naughty cats. The teenagers complied, albeit disgruntled.

"You actually don't have to say thenceforth, that means literally-"

"I don't care, Don! Now, what did you come here to bug me with?" April's sharp eyes scoured holes into all three of the teenagers, now sitting complacently on the floor, before the television.

"Well," Leo began as an elderly man would begin an epic tale of his youth but was interrupted by the sharp cry of Mikey, who windmilled his arms around his head to quiet him.

"Don't! I want to tell them!" As Leo shuffled away, looking put off as he dropped back into the lazy boy, Mikey clapped his hands once to draw attention to himself. "Here ye, here ye! It is my honor to tell you fine ladies that we have found the man of whom you, or ye, seek."

"A young George Clooney?" Robyn asked, sending both females into a fit of giggles, "No, no. I have a better one. Brandon Lee! Forgetting his creepy role as a crow, he was still hot."

"I don't know, I really liked The Crow." April pinched the irritated cheek of Michelangelo's, "Don't worry Mike, you're still our little man."

Raphael used the coffee table to push himself to his feet and bark out, "It's Uncle Augie. There. Now I'm going to have to use your shitter. Don is never allowed to cook Mexican again. Ever."

"Is that why you've been walking like that?" Don didn't look up from his bag as he drew out the puzzle box, "This is what activated the pendent before. I believe that these two are linked together, most likely by the same origin. Both of these items have a strong blue light pulsating from them. As those blue crystals tend to be sources of powers in the Underground cities, I believe that the pendent can also be used to retrain memories as well. From what Mike told us."

Michelangelo pouted, bummed that his brothers took his spotlight of attention, "Yeah, yeah. I had the grand vision and I didn't even get to tell it. You guys suck."

"Stop being such a baby," Robyn chided him as she reached out to be given the box, "It's a lot heavier than I thought it would be. So cold, too. Kinda reminds me of one of the Rubik Cubes." Against the better instincts in the room, she twisted the puzzle box, which again released a wave of blue light to engulf them, taking everything in a storm of cerulean.

* * *

Black stone reflected none of the steady light before them, emanating from a city that looked to be made of ice. It was cold, and Michelangelo rubbed his arms with vigor to regain some of the lost heat. The darkness surrounding the city was thick and loomed just behind them like a hungry beast. He was relieved to see that nobody was left behind by the initial teleportation and that he was, for once, not the one who caused it.

Only a lone sigh resonated through the party. "Robyn. Give me the puzzle box," April eyed her younger sister as an accusing parent would and indicated with her fingers for the object, "Now, before you send us off to some black hole or in the middle of a sun."

"You're so dramatic. It's like like I wanted to come here. If I had a choice in the matter, I'd choose Fiji and I wouldn't bring a bunch of ugly green guys," Robyn handed over the puzzle box with a protruding bottom lip and averted eyes. "No offence."

"I'm just choosing to take none," Leo gazed at their surroundings before calling attention from the party with signals with his arms, like a plane guide. "Mike, I need you to scale up one of these walls and get a general scope of the city and draw up a map. I'm sure Don has some rope in his magical bag of holding. You will be his scout, Don. Raph and I will build up a perimeter and keep watch for any hostiles. April and Robyn, just..."

"Sit around and look pretty?" April offered with a sharp sarcasm, "We'll look through Uncle Augie's notes and see if there's any mention of this city. If we're lucky, he might have drawn in some scales of the interior." She raised a challenging eyebrow, "Or did you have something else in mind?"

Leo shook his head with a deep bow, "All yours. Just make sure to keep sticky fingers there from sending you both off to the Hornet Nest."

Saluting with a grin, April turned to drag her sister away from any more mystical objects that may be in the party's possession and sat her down. She kept her younger sister quiet with sharp looks and directed her to the open journal, which they both pooled over.

Mike watched the interactions with amusement and caught a long line of rope tossed to him by his resourceful brother. He tied the length around himself in tight knots and found a good foothold in the wall. With a spare copy of paper and pens from Don's magic bag, he began to scale the wall with his Shuko spikes embedded deep within the stone. Now close to the material, he was surprised at how grainy the stone was, where he expected a more obsidian-like lustre.

"How's it look from up there, Mike?" He could easily catch his brothers words, as they reverberated in the wide chasm of a cave. "Any signs of life?"

"If there is, I don't see them," he called back as he set himself up in a comfortable position to start sketching out blueprints. The city has a same design as the other he visited with Quarry and his brothers, but it seemed more ancient somehow. That was probably because the towers were carved out of the stone themselves and circled around endlessly. There was no square structure, all circles and spheres as a obelisk stood out directly in the middle of the city. Reminded him a lot of the Tower of Isengard. He doubted he would find anybody as cool as Sauroman though.

There was too much blue everywhere and everything was too cold. And dark. It was as if his dream was almost coming to life, and all he needed now were ear-shattering screeching and creepy faces gawking at him without any features. He kept his mind focused on his work, not letting himself dwell on the ominous tower or foreboding shadows that surrounded the luminescent city.

When done, he called down to Don to secure the rope and scaled back down. The walls were so easy to climb that he probably would have been just as well off without the rope and hook. Grunting as he retrieved the sharp tool, he just let it fall to his brother and climbed down by his own strength. He saw his brother catch the rope below him and put it back in his bag. Mikey wasn't sure how much crap could even be stored in that thing, but from what he's seen, Don was extremely good at fitting more-than-should-be-possible. Maybe the bag was magic.

When they returned back to the main party, Robyn and Raph were deep in a loud argument about whether or not laundry should be separated by colors and water temperature. Where Raph claimed that he had never organized laundry in his life and they have always turned out just fine. That caused April to defend her sister, saying that Raph turned all of her white work shirts pink because he threw in red towels into her load without asking her. Don stepped into the argument with, "All of you are missing the point. You have to gauge how much laundry detergent to use depending on if you're washing with soft or hard water. That and any idiot_ should_ know to never mix whites with colours."

Leo cleared his throat to no avail, nobody heard the leader in the midst of the fighting. Before his brother's pulsing vein popped out of his forehead, Mikey grabbed him by the crook of the arm and dragged him away from the chaos with a worried, "Leo, dude, I need to tell you something. All of this? I think I totally dreamed all of this. Remember with the Quarry and the others from before? I dreamed about that too! Only this time, uh..." Pools of sky widened as he surveyed his family, now laughing and nudging each other around, "You guys don't look too good," Mike swallows past a thick bulge in his throat, "Like, you don't make it. At least, I don't think you do. I don't know, really. I think I'm just-"

"Mikey, I'm not dismissing your dream. Really. But you can't let yourself be distracted by worrying about the future, when you don't even know what it is." Leo raised a hand to silence the interruption, "It's just a dream. Just keep your wits up and don't do anything stupid. That's all you really can do."

Sighing as he knew that his battle was lost, Michelangelo bowed his head with defeat and shuffled back towards the rest of the party. "Yeah, I figured you'd say that. Don't be a dumbass. Got it."

"That's the spirit." Leo found it easier to call attention to himself as he rose his voice only enough to be heard by all, which wasn't very loud at all. His voice had a quality that always carried far. "After Mike is done making copies of the map, we're going to start heading into the city. Once there, we're going to find a set of stairs that leads downwards. If for any reason why get split up, I want each of you to make your way towards the obelisk in the center of the city. It's the tallest building and should be the easiest to get too."

Looks ranging from excitement to fear were exchanged amongst the campaign members but none spoke up to argue or add. Leonardo looked as a general would before calling his men before battle as he paced before them, confident and with a high head. "We're here to look for Augustus O'Neil and to find any information that could be used to send us home. Our first priority is finding a way to get home," his intense gaze locked with the girls and didn't relent until they both nodded in silent agreement, "Now that everything is understood, I'll take the head with Raph at the back. Don, you're behind me and Mike's with the girls."

"Girls?" Robyn crossed her arms with a look that said that she did not appreciate his lack of tact, "I happen to be older than you, bud. I'm not just some girl that you're forced to drag around. I can defend myself, you know."

"Right. Even so, you're in the middle with April and Mike. Come on people, let's head out," Leo commanded as he led the party towards the city. Any objections that Robyn would have made were silenced by her older sister.

There was a bridge of stone that led into the only entrance of the city. Structures as tall as sky scrapers rose far above their heads to almost disappear in the darkness of above. What light there was came from small clusters of blue crystal that dotted the buildings. Mostly there were low murmurs in the party, usually about feet being tread on or sharp elbows that should be kept at their sides. When Raph raised his voice a bit too loud about slow moving traffic with the blind senile driving up front, Leo stopped to snap at him to be quiet or he was going to turn them around. Mike wasn't sure if it was a joke or not, but the far-too-familiar line made him chuckle under his breath.

Robyn tensed besides him and his stomach grew cold, like he swallowed a bucket full of ice. His head snapped upwards and eyes narrowed at the shadowed walls that wanted to swallow up the top of the city. There were figures, he thought, but wasn't sure. The flickering motions were so subtle that he wasn't sure if he should draw his nunchucku or not.

A scream loud enough to put all opera singers to shame cut through the chilled, underground air. Mikey swore his ears were bleeding as he instinctively jumped, adding his own emasculated screech to the chorus. Weapons were drawn, eyes were peeled, and the black figures were so much closer than Mikey thought they were. Not only were they crawling high up on the walls around the city, coming in hordes like giant termites, but they were also slithering around in the shadows of the city.

They flinched away from the shrill cries of terror but quickly regained their composure as a lone creature with skin like leather that was stretched on bones too big for it to contain. There was a orchestra of clicking and whistling that made Mike's blood run as ice and his stomach churn. Those were the faces. The faces that had no features. That were blank.

And they were coming.

* * *

A/N- Figured I'd might as well get this baby up and started again. If it feels rushed, that's because I rushed it. I'm in the makings of some great Trilogy that will be the final work that I post here, so I want to hurry up and finish all of my main stories, and just take down what I don't plan on finishing. So, hope you enjoyed! Feedback would be highly appreciated.


	5. Chapter 5

_I told you all that I was going to update soon. Sure, it's the next day, but I have been getting less hours at Burger King due to no customers. This shouldn't be as rushed as the last chapter, because I have been wanting to get to this section of the story for the last five chapters. Heh heh heh. Hope you enjoy the reading! I know that I had a few good laughs writing this up. _

* * *

There was no reason why anybody, especially her younger sister, should have the means to scream so loudly. April's ears were still ringing as she caught her sister pull something out of her purse from the corner of her eye. The older woman was distracted by the fact that her sister actually _brought_ her purse, when the flaming red head pulled out a large revolver. There were only two shots fired off, one into the forehead of a pursuing attacker and the other to scatter the majority of the horde.

A sharp taste of discharged ammunition hung in the air as the dark figures scurried away from the party. April wasn't sure if she should scold or congratulate her sister. Her sister's hands were shaking over the handle, her finger clicking the safety back on as Robyn peeled her fingers away from the pistol. "I can't believe that actually worked. I thought it'd just piss them off," Robyn managed to choke out. "I think I just lost ten years."

"I don't know what the fuck was louder, that gun or you're damned screaming." Raph tucked his Sai back into his belt with his eyes on the surrounding shadows, "Looks like that scared them shitless, though. Even left one of their own behind."

Before Leo could open his mouth to bark out orders, the curious scientist of the group scurried over to the body with a wild gleam to his eyes. April didn't catch what the mad little genius was muttering, but she doubted it didn't mean well for the thing at his feet. She felt herself be shepherded away from Mike's wild chatter about hot girls and big guns and was burdened with an extremely heavy duffel bag of whatever-the-hell Don managed to cram in there.

Raphael was standing away from the body at quite a distance, looking at it with a wide eyed disgust that she took as fear. "I'm gonna keep watch," his excuse for staying as far away from the dead thing as he could. Nobody objected.

She really didn't want to get near the thing, but since Raph wouldn't come near it, and the two chattering social birds weren't paying attention, it was only her and the mad scientist to figure out how this thing worked. April turned to see if Leonardo The Merciful would spare her the task of helping, but he was already taking rounds of the city with the bug phobic. So it was just her. Great.

"April, look at this!" She didn't want to look. Wouldn't look. "Closing your eyes is the complete opposite of looking."

"I know that, Don." April didn't mean to sound so snappish, but being trapped in some underground city with bug-like humanoid creatures looking to use her and her sister as snack food didn't put her in the greatest of moods. Half an hour ago she was watching Washout and commenting on the stupid people who put themselves through that, and the hot men who competed without their shirts. "I'll open my eyes when you tell me that you've replaced whatever you just took off that thing."

"I didn't take anything off, yet. That's what's so interesting about the anatomy of it."

She peeked through her fingers and wasn't completely repulsed. April expected to see all kinds of internal organs pulled out for inspection. The bag was making her arms go numb, so she tried to hand it back to him. "Why won't you just take it, Don? It feels like you packed your entire lab in this damn thing."

Donatello looked at her the same way her basketball coach would when she tripped up a simple layup. "Fine. I didn't even pack the bag to it's full extent. I was too rushed for time." He let his accusations fly towards the rest of his brothers, who weren't paying attention to notice. The Ninja took the bag from her with one hand like it weighed nothing. April was seriously starting to hate Ninja. That wasn't normal.

"What I found interesting is that these creatures resemble insects more than any class of animal. They have an exoskeleton. I may have the tools needed to cut it open to try to find weak points in it's natural armor."

"And I'm the one who has to hold it down and yell when it wakes up?" She wasn't pleased by the idea. April had seen too many horror movies in her youth.

"It won't wake up. It has a fifty caliber bullet shot through it's frontal bone from a Magnum pistol. It's not getting up by itself ever again." Don whistled with an impressed gleam to his eyes as he pulled out the distorted bullet with a pair of tweezers, "That is a hand gun I'd love to own. I think it's mainly used for bigger game in hunting."

"It is," April said tartly, "It's my Daddy's gun."

April wanted to poke out Don's perceptive eyeballs. He was always reading into everything too much. She didn't care if Robyn was carrying around one of the last items her father ever owned that was rightfully hers in the inheritance. Or that she had been told that the gun was lost when she actually went back to reclaim it as hers. Or that her deceptive little gremlin of a sister had been hoarding it to herself. April could stand to relinquish her Momma's pearls, she was never one for jewelry, but her father promised her that handgun. Obviously now wasn't the time to bring it up, and Dr. Phil didn't need to hear that from her.

"It doesn't have any eyes." April was relieved to have Don divert from that touchy subject. He probably got uncomfortable with her darkening expression. "They wouldn't need them down here in the darkness. The only light source is from those crystalline structures, and even that is quite dim. Their eyes are similar to that of a bat, though, so I find it safe to assume that they use a form of sonar to navigate around. That would explain why they fled at the sound of Mike and Robyn's screaming. The gunshots were probably painful to hear for them."

"The screaming alone was painful," she said.

April knelt besides the creatures and touched the face of it. The shape was that of a human, but there was no mouth, nose, or eyes that could be seen. Just a blank face. "How do they eat? There's no place where they could consume anything. At least, I don't see any." While Don was digging through his bag, April leaned down to examine the chin more, peeling back a thin layer of what felt like cartilage to find a hidden pair of pincers. They were tucked into the face, probably only drawn out before feeding. Her stomach rolled and she sat back with an expression of distaste. "I found how they eat. You were right, Don. I think this is designed more like an insect than any animal. It has pincers."

"When they were hissing before, it reminded me of cockroaches that used to run around the lair when we were young," Don lowered his voice and leaned in towards her, "A large colony of cockroaches was settling down in an old mattress that Raph used to sleep on. I think that's where his entomophobia originated from."

"We found stairs that lead down into the city," Leo interrupted the on-the-spot autopsy, "What, oh." April swore that he must have vomited a bit inside his mouth, by the way his mouth twisted with nausea. "Do you really have to do that?"

Don didn't look up from his work. Apparently he found what he was looking for, a very thin scalpel that he was using to dislodge sections of the exoskeleton. April flinched with every crack or squelsh that the body made as black fluids began to leak out. If she didn't remember the smell of birthing calves and her Daddy's kills of game, then she may have thrown up right there. Raph and Leo both looked discolored, but held their ground. They were tough boys.

Donatello was just a weirdo, either that, or he had no sense of smells. April was torn between if the insides smelled more like battery acid or cat piss. Maybe both. It wasn't until Don literally ripped off the complete front torso of the creature that all three of them turned away from the sight. "That's interesting."

"Interesting? You mean it's fucking disgusting! That's what it is!" Raph had both hands covering his face as his head twitched like a broken pendulum, obsessively looking to see what the noise was, and then tearing his eyes away in disgust. "Fucking hell."

April assumed that cussing was a verbal outlet of his internalized emotions. Or some other deep psychological reason, she didn't really want to get into Raph's head. Leonardo managed to hold his ground, albeit a little pale, but attempted to see what Don seemed so intrigued about. "I don't see anything interesting. Just you mutilating a dead body. This seems so disrespectful. Can't you be more," Leo was running words through his head, "Compassionate?"

Another chunk of exoskeleton was ripped off in response. April knew that the little sociopath was strong, but he was literally tearing that thing to pieces now. Not like a raging tiger, but like a curious cat playing with a caught mouse. He looked up from the mess he created and lifted up a blacked knob of bone, covered in the black ooze that now flooded the area.

"This is some sort of pressure plate in the exoskeleton. I've found only eight so far. So far they're all located where the main pressure points in our bodies are found," Don stood up and wiped his hands uselessly at his sides, which were just as filthy as the rest of him. "So yeah, I stand by my statement. It's interesting. If you just memorize where these plates are located, you can literally just pop them apart."

Raphael looked like he was going to respond, most likely in more vulgar spouts, but bent over to throw up his lunch instead. Maybe Leo was the only non-maniac of the group, because he frowned in sympathy and petted the top of his sick brother's shell. He was such a nice guy.

"What's all the racket- Oh! Yuck! That's so gross! Donnie, you're like-dude. That's sick. There's something totally wrong with you." Mikey gagged at the scene and looked like he was going to join his brother in a vomiting-fest, but managed to compose himself. If he wasn't already green, he would be the color of mashed peas. "Dude. That's just… Dude."

"It's just bodily fluids. Like blood and intestinal juices. It's not like none of you have never been covered in blood before," Don was pulling out more clothes from his bag like a Magicians Hat and wiping off as much as he could, "It doesn't even smell that bad. We live in a sewer. All of you should be used to this."

"Not me!" Robyn was almost as green as the Hamato Brothers. "Don't mix me in with you nutjobs. And if I ever hear you put the words 'intestinal' and 'juices' together, I am going to choke you with your own man purse. I think you just forever made me give up orange juice for the rest of my life. And I loved orange juice, you bastard!"

"It's a duffel bag! It's used in most professional sports to carry equipment," Donatello defended his stupid bag with such vigor that April thought that perhaps he had a clinical case of crazy, "It is not in any way classified as a purse. And the term man purse is completely derogatory and demeaning."

Robyn challenged him with a, "How so?"

"Men don't wear purses," Raph spat out what vile was in his mouth and stood with as much empowering intimidation he could muster up, "Purses are for girls."

Before sex discrimination between the viable functions of a purse could be brought up, Leonardo silenced them all with a booming, "_Enough_!" It was as if the heavens themselves were called into the cavern to shut everybody the hell up. "I have had enough of all of you bickering. We are going to find a way out of here. We are going to do so _silently_. We are not some half-minded fools who trample about to alert every hostile that we are here. So when we get down those stairs, you are going to stay in your positions with no objects or chit-chat. Understand?"

If Leonardo Hamato told her to jump off a cliff, she would. Hell, if he told her to forsake modern living and take her new life to dwell in caves as a hermit to eat nothing but insects and bear dung, she would. The effect seemed identical around the rest of the party, where only wordless nodding was his answer. April needed to figure out a way to bring that guy over to motivate the other Team Members at Mr. Taco.

As he instructed, there was no idle chit-chat or bickering amongst any of them as they began their journey into one of the many buildings. This one was shorter than the rest, almost like a subway station as they entered with a marked trail leading downwards into the stone. The steps were a lot narrower then she was used too, so she used Don as a safeguard from falling on her face. He didn't seem to mind. She knew that he always had an issue with keeping his mouth shut when he wanted to say something, and he was obviously struggling with that now as they moved.

If there was anything approaching, they would hear it. A pin could have dropped three hundred meters away and they would have picked up on it. The stairway went down only about the time it took her calves to start burning. Which wasn't long at all. Probably like five minutes, tops.

When they reached the bottom, the path forked off into two separate paths. Both of those paths seemed to round off at the ends, like a circle. Which would make sense, with how the city was designed. Leonardo stood at the head of the party, his eyes were like thick storm clouds, hard to gauge what was going on inside them. Once he seemed to have made up his mind, he took them to the left route. Back to walking.

As soon as she has the means of funding, April vowed to invest in a Stair Master. Leo was nice. Maybe she could get him to carry her. He would be the only one to not mock or make crude comments about her flabby thighs. At this point, she would even be fine with one of them dragging her behind them. Time was undetermined in how long she was down there, walking until her legs wanted to fall off. The only instances where they would actually stop, with no break of course, were to open up side doors that usually led into large, spacious rooms.

This must have been the recreational portion of the city, because any rooms they did find held ancient equipment that looked ridiculously close to a treadmill. The real challenge was to stop Mikey from swooping in to play on everything. He was like a five year old with a bad sugar deprivation who just walked into a candy shop. Don was almost as bad, wanting to figure out how all of the equipment actually worked. Usually only a sharp reprimand made them keep with the party. Or group, or whatever the hell they called themselves.

As powerful and inspiration as Leonardo's speech was, it couldn't stop Mike from occasionally breaking out in conversation. April almost pitied the kid, he looked so nervous and wound up if his mouth wasn't moving. Usually he babbled about which type of party members they were. Raph was the tank, of course. Leo had so many classes to define him that Mikey just labeled as a Demi-God of Awesome. Don was a close mixture of a necromancer and some type of magical healer. Mikey couldn't make up his mind. Naturally, the two sisters were labeled as the pretty token girls used to make them feel less like losers and more like real men. Like they can only be real men if they play Dungeons and Dragons with a female in the party. Otherwise they'd just be a bunch of losers playing together because they can't get girls to hang out with them.

Before the conversation warped into a full-blown argument, an urgent signal of silence from Leo made everything quiet down. He looked to be reaching for his belt, where there was a pouch of projectile weapons stored, and peeked around the corner of an already open door. April didn't see Leo get swallowed up by any magical blue light, so she assumed it was safe when he walked into the room.

They followed and equal gasps of admiration rung out from everybody, save for Raph, who snorted and said, "Figures. Nobody cares about the badass armory thirty minutes ago but everybody goes gun-ho about some stupid books. It's just a library."

"Just a library?" Don looked at his brother as if Raph had somehow gone mad and turned into a complete imbecile instantaneously, "This could be the key to unlocking how to use the puzzle box! This could be our ticket out of here!"

"Oh," Raph was disgruntled and shrugged off the excitement nonchalantly, "Whatever. I knew that. It's not like you'll be able to read what any of that shit says anyways."

April petted his shoulder sympathetically, the poor guy just wanted to win, for once. Raphael didn't get his chance as the mad scientist grinned as the Cheshire Cat would and all but skipped towards the stone shelves lining the rounded walls, "You honestly believe that if I had several findings of literature from the Underground Cities that I wouldn't take the time to crack them? I don't have the entire language translated, of course, but it reads a lot like the ancient Mayan hieroglyphics do." Any nonsensical jargon about languages was lost in Donatello's enthusiasm as he fluttered around the pieces of literature like a hungry hummingbird.

April distanced herself from the party, letting them wander around the great library to their content. The shelves were carved from the surrounding stone and rose to levels that would equal a three story house. How the ancient civilization reached these heights were unclear to her, although she remembered Don speaking of levitation vehicles. For being so ancient, they were far ahead of modern times.

The room, like the rest of the city, was composed in a simple circle. There was a total of six doorways leading out of the library, all equally spaced from one another. April hoped that somebody was keeping track of where they entered, because she certainly didn't. All the grandeur and massive size of the room took her by such surprise, that she momentarily lost her bearings. Leo will know how to get back out. He always did.

Taking one of the passageways, she made her way along the wall, keeping mind of how far she was moving away from the library. There were runes and hieroglyphics carved into the stone, each probably telling some great piece of history to these people. She yearned to understand what they spoke of, for the mystery was so close it was almost painful. All she had to do was understand, then she would know something that no other human being would. April could definitely understand her Uncle's fascination with studying long-lost cultures. The undiscovered history was almost addicting.

She didn't stop until she crossed with a door, and since she had not turned or swayed from the tunnel, she let herself peak into the room. It was smaller than any of the other ones that they came across. Instead of equipment, weapons, or machines, there were pieces of art that lined the rounded walls. Another sphere, like all the other rooms. Even the tunnels that they traveled through looked to be of a long cylinder. April stepped forward and found the air to be very dry and odorless. Nothing has stirred in here for many centuries.

Mostly there were abstract sculptures created from various types of mineral. She recognized granite, marble, obsidian, and even the rare Sarsen Stone. Maybe these guys were the people who formed the StoneHenge. April wouldn't find it that grand of a leap in thinking. They definitely had the technology to do so.

What caught her interest most was a humanoid shaped container presented in the center of the room. Surrounding it were various vases and what she thought to be a type of candle, only instead of fire, there was a small luminescent crystal. It looked almost like a shrine to some type of mummy. A sarcophagus. At this realization, her pulse quickened as her fingertips hovered over the face painted on the surface of the container.

It looked familiar.

"Who are you?" April wasn't sure who she was asking. Perhaps herself, perhaps the buried being before her. Whoever designed the art on the sarcophagus had a brilliant mind for colors, as splashes of every tone of blue, red, and green were intertwined in beautiful displays. "Somebody must have liked you a lot," she smiled to herself as she ran her hand down the side of the lid, "I bet they missed you."

The great number of memorabilia that surrounded it's resting place was proof of that. Her nails must have latched onto some sort of pressure plate, because the lid lifted from itself and encased her in a very fine sheen of mist. It wasn't water, from what she rubbed between her fingertips, it was white. Almost like a cream. Hoping it wasn't poisonous, which would be her luck, she raised her eyes too peer at the figure inside. Movements, quick and familiar seized her, trapping the scream that would not rise from her throat. Then there was only darkness.

* * *

**A/N- Woah, that was long! Hopefully it wasn't as rushed-sounding as last time. I failed at cleaning my house and the litter box. The cat will most definitely poop in the tub again, because of this. Right, and feedback is greatly loved and all that. Cookies and puppies. **


	6. Chapter 6

_And here comes the action! I have been waiting to write these next few chapters for quite a long time. I hope everybody enjoys reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them. I'm not sure how fast the next bits will come, since the weekend is almost over, but I'll write what I can. I haven't written anything with a lot of action in quite awhile. Any feedback on the action would be appreciated, I don't think I'm portraying what I really want. But I digress! Enjoy._

* * *

There were books and books and books. These weren't regular books, they were all made of stone and had funky lettering carved in them. All these books and not a single one had a picture. What was the point of books if they didn't have pictures? Not everybody could read. Or liked to read.

Every time Mikey attempted to climb up one of the shelf cases, somebody's hand would usually yank him down with a sharp, "Don't do that!" The young, adventurous turtle was more peeved by the fact that he said the same thing to his own cat every day the little critter tried to climb the shower curtains. Those were dangerous for Klunk, but these stone shelves weren't going to fall on top of him. And he was a Ninja. He would always land on his feet.

His brothers didn't seem to understand his plight, so he took it to his best interest to try finding something other than stone books to occupy his time. It's not like he could read them anyways, there were no pictures! He counted only four heads in the room, other than him, and that meant that Miss April O'Niel was missing. Nobody else seems to care, as Raph was looking at each book he pulled from the shelves like it was organic beer, and Leo was hovering over Don's shoulder as he actually studied the tablets. Robyn was using the barrel of her handgun as a mirror to put on some eyeliner. Mikey didn't think he would be missed if he slipped away to find the missing lady.

There were six passageways he could go through. Since he totally forgot which one they came in originally, that meant that he still had all of them to choose from. Leo probably remembered, he's good with that sort of thing. Since the curved passageway that they were taking earlier turned so sharply, Mikey imagined them walking in a spiral, where the library was it's center. Already, he was drawing out the visuals of these passages of his head, and was strongly reminded of a spiraled lollipop. Now he was hungry.

Figuring that playing eeny-meeny-miny-mo was out of the question, he studied the walls in the same areas that April's hands would be if she was dragging her fingers along it as she walked. Since she was playing Psycho Doctor with Don earlier, she probably had some traces of the gunk that was pumping out of that bat cockroach thing. If Mikey had to give an example of a faceless face, they would be the example. Which was in his dream. Which was freaking him out. Not that anybody ever listened to him.

Bingo. Third passageway he checked had faint smudges of that black stuff trailing away from the library. Good thing April had messy fingers, or Mike may have never been able to track her. Unless Don was actually being sincere when he said that he has an electric tracker in every one of them, and not being a glorified creeper. Which he totally was.

"What's down here?" Mikey jumped as a female voice spoke up behind him, "Don't you start screaming again, man. I'd like to keep my hearing before I become an old lady, like April."

"Hey, it wasn't not a scream. It was a war cry. I was preparing myself for battle."

"Whatever you say, bub. Did April come down by here? I saw her going down one of these passage-thingies. There's so many of them, it's like a corn-maze only you can't run through the stalks when you actually do get lost." Robyn caught up enough to walk by his side, her eyes were a lighter green then April's, more like a blade of grass. Like spring.

"I think she did. She left traces of the Bat-Guy as she dragged her hands down the wall," Mike indicated to the smudge marks with his hand, "See?"

"Congratulations, Holmes." Robyn ran a hand back through her bangs, to push them out of the way. The bright red color was almost as strong as a fire engine. "April always did have to touch everything when we into stores. She always managed to put the blame on me, too!"

"Yeah, Don did that to us a lot. Even Leo did occasionally, once he figured out how. Me and Raph were total suckers for being scapegoats. It was probably us only," he counted off his fingers and mouthed off the numbers in his head, "Ninety percent of the time? Don was the nine point nine percent. Leo was the only good child in the family," he laughed.

Robyn laughed, a rumbling from her belly as it filled the passageways with her mirth. Grinning, Mikey raised his pointer finger to his mouth and said, "Quiet, remember? We don't want Leo, Son of Splitnerson coming down here to kick our asses. I think she walked through here, anyways."

The trail of smudges ended at a doorway to their left. They peeked inside and Robyn squeaked with concern, "April!" The red head hovered outside the doorway and looked sideways to him with an imperious expression, "Aren't you going to get in there and check it out? You're the manly Ninja between us two. Whatever got to her could totally take me out. Then you'd have two unconscious damsels to worry about."

"Says the chick who's trigger happy and holding that huge-ass gun," he laughed. Seeing that she wasn't going to enter anytime soon, he took the initiative to scope out all corners and even the ceiling before he entered. It was clear. Mike waved her in and she precariously entered with wide eyes transfixed on the creepy looking coffin standing upright. Maybe there was a vampire inside.

Robyn's face twisted and contorted like she was about ready to have a seizure, but thought better and walked into a night club instead. Mikey was sure she was having some kind of psychotic episode where her brain was going to implode when her eyes just rolled up into her head and she crumpled on top of her sister. Their family had a serious issue with fainting. Don said that they might have some minor form of Narcolepsy. For an entire week Mike thought that he was going to catch what April had and avoided her apartment like the plague. It took the whole family, along with several long and boring documentaries, to convince him that Narcolepsy wasn't contagious.

"Okay then," Mike wasn't really sure what else to say. It wasn't like they could hear him anyways. "Both of you, just stay there and don't move. I, the non-damsel will deal with this." Heart pounding in the back of his head and hands shaking, he tip toed up to the coffin and managed to move the lid off just a little more so he could see everything in side. Screaming shrill enough to break glass, he backed up from the spectacle, tripping over the two unconscious girls behind him and landing on the flat of his shell. Mike loved being a turtle.

Within seconds, withdrawn weapons and rushed footfalls came into the room behind him with Leo's booming voice saying, "April, what is it?"

"I doubt April was the one that screamed that loudly. She's unconscious. As well as Robyn, it seems. Your culprit is the damsel in distress that's sitting on top of them." Don was always a sarcastic bastard. "Is that Augustus O'Neil? He looks well preserved. Unless he's in some form of suspended animation."

"Nah, he's dead. I know a dead person when I see one," Raph had no qualm with giving the body a head-to-toe look over and going like a caveman to sling both girls over his shoulders, "What the hell do we do with it?"

"Dudes, this is their Uncle Augie! Can you stop referring him to some dead guy? That's just wrong," Mikey even stood in front of the body and waved his arms to strengthen his argument.

"But he is some dead guy," Raph responded with an indifferent shrug, "Not like he can hear you. Hell, the girls can't even hear you."

"But-"

"Mike, he has a point." Leo finally stepped in with a look that says that he actually has a plan for this. Mikey swore that his brother had a plan for _every_ situation. The dude should be President.

"We're going to cover Mr. O'neil back up, because since that coffin-"

"Sarcophagus would actually be a more correct term," Don corrected the should-be-president.

"Fine, sarcophagus. Since it was preserving him so well, we don't want him to start rotting on us. They wouldn't take that very well. Because we found our secondary objective, our main and only mission is to get out of here. As you guys probably have noticed," Leo took this moment to reach over and pick up the duffel bag from Don's shoulder and give it a few hearty jerks, "We have no food. And unless Don packed pop-tarts or Spam, we won't have anything to eat down here."

"I vote we eat Raph first!" Mikey shot his hand in the air and balked at the annoyed expressions from his brothers, "What? Unless you want to eat Batman back there, he's the one with the most meat on his bones."

"Actually," Don's eyes glazed over as his mind teleported away from his body. Probably back to the dead creature they left at the surface of the city, "If you strip away the exoskeleton and discard the internal organs-"

"NO!" Raph almost dropped the girls in his involuntary backpedal of disgust, "You are not going to even_ think_ about it, Don. I will seriously fucking kick your creepy, disgusting ass. Okay? Okay. No more talking about fucking bugs. Ugh! You all make me sick. I'm going to go back up to the boring ass library and stare at more picture books, or whatever."

"You found picture books?" Blue eyes shot up from the floor as Mike leapt to his feet, "Where? I couldn't find any!"

"You just said you wanted to eat me, asshole. I ain't telling you nothing."

"But that was a joke, dude! Sure, a bit of a morbid one, but it was all for kicks and giggles. I wouldn't really want to eat you. Leo, maybe, but that's because he has such great skin complexion." Nobody was laughing and Mikey was beginning to get the the feeling that he wasn't very funny. It was the end of his comedy career. "Fine, fine. No more cannibalism jokes. We need water too, you know. We'll die from that before food anyways."

"Oh, I always bring water. That's the most essential commodity of any exploration pack," Don jiggled his prized duffel bag with pride, "I wouldn't go anywhere without at least a bottle or two."

"What about food?" Leo asked as he began to shepard the party out of the room, "You at least packed something to keep us going, right?"

"I don't feel comfortable with sharing with people who contemplated the act of cannibalism."

"It was a joke!" Behind his brothers, he couldn't tell if they were giggling or just trying to stay away from him. He didn't mean it. It wasn't like he was being serious. "Dudes, seriously. Like, I am not a cannibal. It was just some stupid joke! Don't look at me like that!"

Sometimes his brothers were so cruel to him.

* * *

Those couldn't be his eyes. Not those same eyes who scolded her for climbing up onto the barnyard roof, or wrestling with the town's boys, or wearing Mama's good heels and makeup to a calving. Robyn knew what those eyes should look like. They were the bright, kind, and adventurous eyes that she always pleaded to tell stories of his feats or to take her with him. Uncle Augie never did take her, or April, with him. He always went alone and now he's dead.

The green guys all gave them space. Just as well, she didn't want to be around anybody right now anyways. There was some argument if the body was in stasis, like some pre-existing pod thing that they found in another city like this. Don himself made the call. Robyn didn't now the guy very well, but she knew that he was the smartest person April knew and was wrong about as many times as the moon turned blue. The boys busied themselves with studying those stone books. Robyn hoped that they would find a way to get out soon, so that they can get back to the city and she can go find another boyfriend. Maybe she'll go for a lawyer this time. A rich workaholic who only needed a good tumble occasionally. She didn't yearn for the vain and petty attention that she used too. Not anymore.

"How are you holding up?" Robyn couldn't stand her sister asking that same question, over and over again. She always said that when they buried their Mama, and she's still saying it now. The younger woman wouldn't give the answer the dignity it deserved, so it rang flat.

They sat with their backs both leaned against one of the many shelves. Where April's feet were stretched out and long, Robyn was curled up in a tight ball with her arms wrapped around her knees like she was still twelve and being told a scary story around a campfire. Every time Robyn saw something that reminded her of Uncle Augie, like Don's excited chattering over the old stone tablets, or Mike's lively and cheery eyes bounding around with picture books in his hands, the room swam in a vision of blurred colors.

"I, I don't think he suffered," April tried again with a tremble to her voice, "I actually think he was well revered. There may even be depictions of him in the history books, here. Don says that it'll take longer than he estimated before to calibrate the time as well as location with the puzzle box. We'll get out here. It'll just be a bit of a wait."

"Like how I waited for Mamma?" Robyn was too riled up with her own grief to hesitate when April averted her eyes miserably. "You mean the same damn way that I waited for two days, just sitting at that park, waiting for her to come and play with me?"

"We're going to get out of here, Robyn. We're not going to be trapped here."

"You're going to say that bullshit to me some more? I'm not seven anymore. I'm not stupid enough to believe what's not true. I can see that we're stuck here. Even if Don does crack how to use that thing, it'll take weeks. We don't even have any food! The more he works, the more he'll get tired and make mistakes. We're all just going to die here like him!"

"And what does despairing about that help? Nobody. That's what happens. You help nobody. Your fear is just infecting everybody else until the whole damn group is too miserable too fight and go on," April's tone turned sharp with a strength and hardiness that the younger sister never saw before, "So you just pick yourself up and keep on moving. Because if you stop, we're all dead."

That's when the floodgates broke and her sister's arms enveloped her quivering form. Soft hands rubbed her back and the other tucked away strands of the shoulder-length cherry hair that fell into her weeping eyes. Just like how Momma used too.

"I'm sorry, Robyn. I'm so sorry for leaving you behind. For not being there when Mama got into the accident, for not being able to even help you now with Uncle Augie. I just don't know what to do."

Apologies and apologies. Excuses and excuses. With all of these promises her sister made, there was still a tight ball of bitterness in Robyn's chest that kept on growing and growing with every utter of her sister. The more she talked, the more angry and confused she became. The more the arms grew cold and uncomfortable, like a big insect crawling up her spine. Mama was gone. Daddy was senile. Uncle Augie was gone now, too. All the important people in her life were faded from the picture. All except April now, who could have always been there. Who was still apologizing and making excuses and Robyn couldn't find it in herself to accept that. It wasn't enough.

"I hate you."

Arms were released, Robyn couldn't look at her sister now, she hadn't said such venomous words in years. Not when she was young and still grieving for her mother with an older sister who tried and failed to replace what was lost. Her sister moved away from her then, and the air was cold. Made her shiver and weep and simply want to be alone. She didn't want anybody near her. She didn't want anybody to remind her of him, or those others who are gone and lost.

It was like fate brought down a mighty hammer to strike at all of them. Just minutes after the hateful words where said, the screams began. Inhuman and not the clicking and whistling from before, these cut into the bone like the Ring Wraiths from that trilogy that one of her boos loved. The stone rumbled and crashed around them, leaving her numb and in shock as a creature far larger from before trampled into the great library.

First came this heaving, black and toothed beast who's saliva dropped down onto the stone floor and caused it to hiss and smoke up, leaving a foul odor behind. It wasn't the ones screaming, it was the thundering foot falls and throat-splitting howling that made all the hair on her body stand up. Everything moved so fast, but she just watched in trance of slow motions.

The beast first leaped at Leo. With swords drawn, the smaller green guy rolled underneath it and twisted his body to attack it from below. His blades moved too fast for her eyes to follow the motion, but the monster began to bleed a lot and everywhere. Don's voice cut through the room as he yelled, "Go for the points in the necks or solar plexus area! Those deliver the most damage!"

"Already on it," Raph barked out as his Sai spun in his hands like batons as he reversed grips with such speed that Robyn thought that his hands looked like one, big metallic blur. "Don't you dare spit acid on me, fucker!" Throats impaled and heavy kicks threw the leathery bodies across the room, "There's too many of these ugly bastards. I'm getting swamped over here!" With the horde pressing in on him and Don, they were being pushed to one end of the room, back to back. Even together, with Don's staff keeping the majority of them at bay, while Raph gutted the ones up close, they were being overrun.

"Mike, get the girls out! Now!" Leo was still tussling with the biggest of them all, riding it's back like some knightly cowboy with his swords embedded into the back of it's neck. It still moved, regardless. "This thing isn't like the others. It's more durable. We need to get to open ground!"

"Well, which fucking door do we take to get out of here?" Raph asked as he and his staff-wielding brother were beginning to back more into one of the side passages, "Because I can't see shit over all of these uglies."

"That one!" Leo rose above the crowd, still upon the back of the raging beast, and pointed to the doorway closest to April. She had a limitless supply of stone tablets to defend herself against the horde. Mikey stood in front of her, keeping the majority of them at bay with his spinning sticks that had enough power to break them apart at the seems. True to Don's word, the energetic warrior aimed for the abdominal and neck areas, causing the exoskeleton to pop and break apart like Lego Figures. The room was filled with the crunching and clattering of fallen bodies, not at all the soft thumps that she would have imagined. It was like a giant boot was going around and crushing hordes of spiders underfoot.

"Negative on that, Leo. I can't freaking see where the hell you're pointing!" Mikey called out as he leaned back to dodge the swipe of one of the humanoid creatures, only to have it's head bashed in by a thrown tablet. "Strike! Nice shot, April!" Robyn couldn't understand how the guy could laugh in a situation like this.

Or why none of them have come to attack her. She was still pressed up in the side of the room farthest from the fighting. Trembling in her knees, she used the shelves to help in her climb to her feet and turned her head just enough to see the closest passageway she could escape in from the corner of her eye. She didn't think she would make it far, if she started moving now.

Why didn't they know she was there? Then she saw it. None of them had eyes. Just giant ears that stuck out like a bat's. Only the beast had any form of teeth, and it was attempting to use those teeth on Leo, who it managed to fling from it's back. Her heart shot up to her throat, it was going to come down on him like a cat would an injured mouse. Leo on the ground, his swords still jutting out from the things back as he clutched a smoking arm which had the same smell as seared flesh. It got to him.

"Get, you - " Words held little meaning more than nonsensical babbling as she drew out her pistol, popped off the safety and raised it to the beast with sharp eyes, "You get the hell away from him!"

One fired shot off, Leo rolled away from the torrent of acidic blood that erupted from the beast, and flipped back to the thing's spine to retrieve his swords in a flurry of metal. They knew where she was now, and they were coming. Her feet didn't hesitate to turn and sprint out the nearest passage, the howling beast and other humanoids hot on her trail. She didn't turn back to see how many where following her. There was a stampede of monsters that she didn't have enough bullets for.

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**A/N- I actually reread this over again a second time so maybe, just this ONCE, I managed to escape any misspellings or grammar issues. If I haven't, I'm sure Ms. BubblyShell will watch my back on that. Ha ha ha ha ha!**


	7. Chapter 7

_I know that this chapter is unbelievably shorter than the others, but it has been sitting in my laptop for almost two weeks so I just wanted to hurry up, finish it, and get it out. Even then, I was torn between adding the next part or not, and decided on a cliff hanger. I'm so awesome like that, I guess. Sorry for the wait, it's been getting harder to get inspired to write and all that. But even so, I hope ya'll enjoy! I think I'm going to go take a nap now. Heh heh heh._

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"I hate you."

It was like a ball of ice was dropped into her stomach, making her throat close up. She didn't know what to say, so she said nothing. Guilt was heavy in her heart as she moved away from her grieving sister. Robyn hated her. Of course she did, April couldn't remember the last time she even had a decent conversation with her sister. After all of those years of being trapped in that pit of quicksand, just being dragged down into the family and overwhelmed; it was too much. April couldn't stand to take care of them anymore. Not since her mother died and everything fell apart. At times, she even wanted to forget that she had a family.

"Hey, you." Mike gave her a small, encouraging smile and presented to her a picture of herself, adorned in her Uncle Augie's hat in a pencil sketch. "I almost drew in the beard, too, but thought you could see your smile better if you were clean shaven. You look a lot like him, you know."

"I take more after my Daddy than," she stopped as her eyes misted over and throat closed. That ridiculous yellow hat played in her mind. That hat with the wide, endless rim that was as bright as the sun. The hat that her mother used to wear on every sunny day. "It's good, Mike. Thanks."

Michelangelo could always get her to smile. She had a new family, now. She wasn't the same person that she was all those years ago, she grew. The picture was so life-like, that she could actually see the intense desire for untold adventures in her eyes, which were her Uncle's. April never saw the similarity before, until now.

Tips of her fingers just grazed the sketched picture when the thundering started. It was like a storm composed of stone as the entire library rumbled, erupting into a flurry of bodies as a lone passageway erupted with those creatures from before. April was pushed back by her younger, green friend as he withdrew his weapons to hold off the majority of them. With a shelve of endless books just to her left, she had her pickings, but threw each stone tablet with a guilty conscious. The history that she was possibly destroying deluded the satisfaction of hearing the crunch as the stone embedded itself into the skulls of those things. Or back, legs, shoulders; whichever part she actually managed to hit.

Mostly April focused on whatever creature managed to slip past Mikey's defences and tried to aim most for those. She only looked up occasionally to see how Leo was faring, who seemed to take it in his best interest to ride this large beast like a deranged cowboy. She couldn't see the other two Ninja, which worried her some, but she knew they could handle themselves. It wasn't until she heard the loud gunshot and the beast howl in pain, that her mind came back to her sister. Who she forgot. Again.

"Mike, you have to go - "

"What? Go where?" He didn't turn to see her, simply kicking back one creature into three others, and swinging his weapons to clobber two others on the head, that were trying to flank him. Their numbers where dwindling, now. A good majority of them rushed through one of the passageways, and April knew that her sister was their pursuit. "I'm not just going to leave you to get eaten, dude."

"Please, they're after my sister. You have to keep her safe!" April would have gone herself, but there was no physical possibility that she could overpass the creatures in speed. Mikey was the fastest of any of them, if anybody could catch up to them now, it would be him. That and April wasn't sure the condition of any of his brother's, she wasn't sure if they'd even be in the condition to walk, let alone run. "Please, Mikey."

He didn't have time to think, so he simply nodded and stepped back towards her and said, "Okay, follow my lead. I'm going to bull rush a path through these uglies, Raph-style. Just don't fall or anything."

April wasn't sure what he was planning, and barely managed to keep after him as he suddenly took off like a race-car at the tracks, pounding through their numbers with such fast precision that they fell back in waves. She had to leap and stumble over the bodies, just able to keep up, but the strain killed her knees. She felt so old compared to these young Ninja. Mostly, she just tried to stay alive, that was about the highest level of helping them that she could attain.

Leo was up on his feet, harbouring his left arm as he swung around his Katana in tight circles, like a baton of death that ripped the heads from all shoulders in his destruction radius. The eyes of her friends always changed in the middle of battle. Intense, dark, and critical; she knew that they looked only for ways to disable or cut down an enemy. Against humans, this frightened her, but she could only feel reassurance to have such powerful allies, now.

"I'm going after Robyn," Mike called behind him as he leaped up to clasp onto a shelf behind them. "I'll meet you up at that tower thing, okay?" Like some four-legged spider, he bounded and leaped from bookshelf to bookshelf, keeping away from the fray, and moving over to the tunnels that her sister just fled down. Whenever the smallest turtle moved, he was like a green blur that rocketed from area to area. April never knew that that little ball of bundled energy could move so fast.

"You're with me then," Leo said. The creatures, now with their numbers halved several times and bodies of their own piled among the floor in heaps, began to back off more. Only a few select brave leaped at Leo, who easily kept them at bay with his fatal blade. "Raph and Don went down that tunnel to our right, it's not the one I pointed at before, but they have a copy of the map. I'm sure they'll find the right route."

The last creature standing showed now fear, or was incapable of showing fear, as Leonardo used the bodies of fallen enemies as a step ladder to flip over it's head. While twisting forward, he brought down his blade against the shoulder of it, cutting into one of the pressure plates and ripping off the exoskeleton. He landed with his knees against the now soft surface of the creature, knocking it down and driving it to the ground, as well as severing the thing's head from it's body.

If Leonardo was human, he would be the Bruce Lee of this modern day.

"So you remember which tunnel we have to go down?"

"That one." Pointing to the passageway to their far left, Leo said, "I made it very obvious which way to go down. I even stood on top of that thing to give them a clear visual of which way I was pointing."

"Not everybody is as directionally oriented as you, I suppose. Including me." April wouldn't let Leo squirm out of her help as she surveyed his acid wounds. Blackened flesh with a yellow pus that had the same consistency as pudding leaked out in blobs. Her face cringed at the acid burning stench that emanated from the pus. April didn't know the body could create such disgusting liquids, and she worked on a ranch for the first parts of her life. "Too bad Don has the magical bag, we need to clean that up."

Anxious to move, Leo was already walking out of her reach, refusing to stay long to get himself healed. "Just mend it on the way. The more time we stand around; the more time is wasted. The faster we move, the better."

"Says the guy with his arm rotting off," April admonished. True to what he said, she managed to rip the bottom portion of her shirt into strips. It was like back when she was younger, and her father would make them rip up old clothes to make clothes to clean with. With little money, they always improvised to make what they needed. The shirt she wore was a plain cotton one with short sleeves, something that looked from the eighties that had the same shape as a tent. At least it made decent bandages.

It would have been so much easier to clean out the majority of the wound if the guy didn't walk so fast. She felt like his mother chasing after him as he wanted to rush to his first day at school, but she still wanted to clean off morning's breakfast from his dirty cheek. "Will you at least slow down enough for me to clean you up! This is ridiculous, Leo. I'm not going to chase you just to try to fix up your arm."

Footsteps lessened, but Leo did so grudgingly. April wiped up what she could, using her own saliva as a cleaning solution, since they were so limited on first aid. If this technique always worked by her parents and grandparents, then it would work for him. A little spit never hurt anybody. It wasn't until several minutes past and they had travelled well around the looping hallways, that Leo finally spoke up with, "Do you regret leaving?"

April blinked, she expected Leo to complain about the poor malpractice of first aid. Even as she prodded and wiped away the majority of the pus, blood, or burned flesh; he never even grimaced. It was like his face was set in the same stone that surrounded them. She almost contemplated telling him that she didn't understand his question, but she knew. She knew exactly what he was asking about. Sighing, she finished tying off the final make-shift bandage and said, "Yes, and no."

"No?" She could tell that he didn't expect that answer with the way he balked in surprise, "What do you mean by no? I thought that, well – I suppose I don't know what I was thinking."

As much as April enjoys a good heart-to-heart with any of her adopted, weird, and crazy family; she still wasn't sure about the wisdom of his timing. "You're asking this now?"

"Sorry." Turning his eyes away, he found the opposing wall to be interesting enough to keep his attention away from her. Teenagers. Even as anxious she was about her own missing sister and the others, she could sympathize with the younger Turtle.

"I said yes and no because I still believe, that back then, I needed to get out. If I didn't, I wouldn't be able to grow up as me." That sounded odd. April was surprised that her young friend nodded with a look of understanding. Maybe it was the bond of elder children pressured to be what their family needed them to be. "I will always regret leaving them, but eventually I learned that I needed to leave for me."

Even at the inappropriate timing of the situation, April could easily tell that her friend was still struggling with that guilt. It was only a year ago that he left for so many months, and with his brothers all separated from the hordes, he would probably be worrying about his past regrets. In case he didn't see them again. April understood that feeling well.

"Are you sure you didn't want to turn back and try to follow them?"

"Even by the time their numbers were down enough for us to go after one of the groups, it was too late. Raph and Don will know how to find their way back up to the surface. But Mike - "

"Will be fine," April interrupted. "He may be living in some other dimension from us, but his head is in the right spot. That and once he gets going, nobody can catch him."

Leonardo nodded, but said nothing else. His skin was clammy and had the complexion of one that was three months dead and buried. April was surprised that he was still moving at all, let alone at the brisk walk that he was keeping up. The poor guy was probably tearing himself up for not being able to run and catch up with at least one of the other parties. That he thought himself weak and a hindrance. It was never hard to read her worrisome friend.

They said nothing else until the reached the surface of the city. From there, Leo pointed with his functioning arm and said, "I can see a set of stairs spiraling up the obelisk. The blend into the stone well, so they're hard to see."

"I'm old, not blind." April squinted at the dark, towering obelisk of stone before her with apprehension. She couldn't see the stairs from here. Damn Ninja and their super vision. "Alright, I take that back. I'm old, feeble, and blind. All of those battles with demons, aliens, and Ninja must have aged me past twenty seven, somehow."

Leonardo made an add odd sound in the back of his throat that was a mixture between a choke and a what could have been a chuckle. The older women didn't feel up smiling, just yet. They climbed up the stairs, slowly because of April's nervous and faulty footsteps up the steep stone. There was no wind to push them about the revolving steps, but they kept close to the tower regardless, and moved with great care.

The top of the tower was a flat plane of stone. Only a small pedestal struck any interest in the pair as the walked towards it with caution. When they were only a foot or so away, a circular platform dropped from the roof like an elevator, slowly letting them down. April half expected some alien form of boring, monotonous music play through invisible speakers. She thought to hum the elevator music that played in her apartment building, but the intense and stoic gaze of Leonardo stopped her from doing so. If he was silent, then so she would be as well.

A minute or so of descending was all it took to reach the bottom of the shaft. Stone doors pulled away and more blue light filtered through on the other side. The air in this chambers was electrifying and made the hair on her arms stand up. Blue pods, apparatuses that Leo recognized by the slight widening of his stormy eyes, dotted around the room with equal distances. As with the library, this room was also in a circle and had to have been at least twice the size of the former room. Her breath came in puffs of mist as her mind absorbed the vastness of this chamber.

As Leonardo left to inspect the pods, the awestruck woman made her way to the center of the room. There stood a simple fountain, only instead of the dark, grey stone that covered the rest of this area, this was made of a luminescent marble. At least, she thought it to be marble, although the material did not have the same luster as stone. More like a cloud, unless her eyes were tricking her.

Inside the fountain was a liquid that April would never have guessed to be water. More like a thick, blue, and shining stew that looked to be what filled ice packs for swollen joints. Edging closer, she leaned over to peer in the pool and saw her reflection. It was like looking into the mirror. Instead of her features being tinged with blue, like she thought, all colors of her being stood out starkly against the blue.

"Hey, Leo? You might want to check this out. The alien pods aren't going anywhere but this, whatever this stuff is, it's moving."

"I'd step away from the glowing pool, April. Anything supernatural usually spells trouble with us. We must have done horrible things in our past lives to have this bad of karma."

His voice was still far away. April never turned her eyes from her own reflection, oddly captivated by the face that she had seen her entire life. Green eyes turned white, whatever tan she managed to capture over the summer paled into a snow white and her famous red hair lost it's color. Only a light blue donned her head now as the smile widened in the pool, the muscles in her face mimicking the movement.

The mouth that is not her own utters, "The stone shudders as the foot treads upon it. The air quivers as the lungs steal it. The bone crumbles as age defies it. Time is what binds them all, and what will be the end of you in your entirety."

Her face split then, and the great chambers began to tremble.

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**A/N- I was going for possessed/creepy. I think I just got creepy. Heh heh heh. I know that's a horrible place to cliff hang on, but I have future plans for it that I hope will turn out as awesome as I think they will. Any feedback would be awesome, dudes. Good, bad, or the ugly. Brain is officially fried. **


	8. Chapter 8

_I know, I know. It's been forever. This has actually been in my documents for months. Or a month? Time holds no meaning to me, sometimes. Heh heh heh. I guess I say inspiration to write was inspired by ChatterBOXX, T.D. Rayne, and SushiSheaShogun. If I got those names right. Enjoy!_

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If hell ever broke loose anywhere, it probably looked a lot like this. With more bodies than even Raphael knew what to do with, he found himself stepping over crumpled remains of those creatures as new waves fell on him and his brother. His footing was sloppy as he kept on sliding in the entrails and juices, as Don would have it, that those nasty things left behind.

At least his brother's little trick worked, as Raph found it much easier to take apart these bug things at the soft under-armor, right below those pressure plates. One mighty jab there with his Sai, and they popped apart like cheap toys from the dollar store. Or April's shop. A good several dozen of the uglies were pushing him and Don back to one of the tunnels. Raph could barely make out Leo saying something about a way out, but couldn't raise his eyes from handful of the uglies trying to make a snack out of him.

"What'd he say, Don? I can't see shit over these fuckers." Another leaped for his face and his stomach plummeted into an ice bucket at the grotesque pincers that began to protrude from it's - whatever the hell that was. Some kind of mouth, he guessed. He hated bugs.

"A little preoccupied over here with insect horde." Don flipped the Bo Staff across his back to switch grips and impale one ugly through the bottom of the chin, popping past the roof of it's head. It all came apart like a poorly constructed building after an earthquake. "Shit, I must have struck one of the acid glands." With his Bo Staff sizzling into two pieces, Donatello's hands shifted to the ends and simply gripped both halves as separate weapons.

Raph kicked off the wall for leverage as he flew over the heads of at least six of the creatures to cover his brother's blindspot now that his range was severed. They were inside one of the tunnels and it was hard to maneuver in the limited space.

They didn't fight like their usual enemies. Purple Dragons or Foot could be tricked with a feint for the upper hand. Or at least throw a wide punch and get them to back off. These don't. These uglies don't care if they get a Sai to the throat or not, because they only seem to care about sticking those creepy pincers into them. His skin already crawled with disgust at having them so close. He hated bugs.

"Time at the petting zoo is up, Raph. You have to stop staring at the animals and get moving!"

Raph tore his eyes away from the horde before him as he shot off after his retreating brother with an angry, "I don't run like some coward! You – you coward!"

The ugly bastards nipped at his heels like annoying little dogs. Only they spit acid and were trying to eat him. His brother was only a few paces ahead of him and was searching around in his bag. Probably for explosives, if Raph knew that pyromaniac well enough. Which he did. Lived with him long enough.

"Can't you move faster than that, Raph? If you get caught in the blast radius, you'll be buried with them. It's not like we're running from greasy slumbags of New York. I thought that giant bugs chasing you would make you more apt to running like hell."

Being as Raphael couldn't tell if his brother was honestly concerned or just being a snarky asshole, he opted for a mixture of both as he pumped both of his arms in his sprint. Remembering how Mike always ran as if he feet were flying across the ground, he kept more on the balls of his feet and forced his bulky self forward. Running was never his thing.

Without warning, there was a blinking red disk that was thrown behind them, towards the scrambling masses behind them. Raph faltered in the dead sprint, muscles more accustomed to heavy weights and not wind sprints, but his brother managed to clasp him by the forearm and pull him forward. There was no fire, only a sharp pop that caused a wave of air to push at their backs, and send them forward.

Tumbling rocks and debris filtered down after the tunnel fully collapsed, just feet from them. Ears ringing, heart pounding, and legs shaking from the sprint; Raph spat what dirt and gravel he could from his mouth. "Well, fuck. Why didn't you just blow them all up before?"

"This is less of an explosion, and more of a sonic pulsation. It's meant to cause tunnel collapses since it shakes up the rock rather than just igniting an explosion. Cheaper that way," Don answered as he used the wall to climb to his feet, "If I threw one of those babies in the library, the whole infrastructure would have collapsed. Best to do it with no innocent bystanders in the crossfire."

"I guess there's a reason why we drag you along after all." Raph popped a light fist on his brother's shoulder and nodded down the tunnel, "Better get moving if we want to meet up with the others."

"Me? If anybody was going to question the usage of anybody around here, it would be you." Taking the first steps on the new leg of their journey, Don kept several paces ahead of him as he continued with, "You work quite well as a battering ram, but I'd hardly call that skill as being a necessity."

If Raph's legs weren't still feeling like pudding, he would have at least attempted to swing at his brother. Instead he yelled, "If anybody's the sheep around here, it's you! You and your damn - "

"No, see – You're not getting my jibe. A battering ram is used to break down heavy doors. If you don't understand the remark, then the point of me insulting you is completely lost."

"Yeah, well – I knew that!" Shoulders hunched and fists swinging at his sides, he stomped ahead of his brother and declared, "You're not the only one with a brain around here."

Raphael swore that he could hear his brother's eyes roll up and into his head. There was no snide comment, only the crinkle of paper being unfolded was heard behind him. They walked on for several minutes, Raph still silently fuming as his brother gazed over the map. It wasn't until their path, which was turning to their left in a steady bend, came to a fork with two different tunnels. They could either keep on going straight ahead, which appeared to slope upwards, or turn left to go down a flight of steps.

"What did you stop for? We have to keep on going down this passageway," Don said as he indicated to the tunnel before them with a wave of the map, "This place is designed to spiral up or down. Since we are aiming for the surface, we go up."

Arms crossed and ears sharp, Raph raised a hand for his brother to shut up as he focused on the two tunnels before him. The air flow was so subtle that it was almost impossible to pick up on, but Raph had been lost in the sewers before, and had to be able to choose from different sets of tunnels. If he chose wrong, he would be trapped at a dead end. His gut leaned more towards the stairs, where he could hear and feel the air flow going down into. The other tunnel was dead silent, as if nothing stirred on the other side. No opening.

"I say we go down the stairs."

"Right. When our destination is above us, lets down the steps downwards. Next you'll be telling me that to go west, we have to turn and travel east."

His brother attempted to show him the map, but Raph refused to see it. He simply crossed his arms and said, "There ain't no air flow down that other tunnel. It's probably collapsed on the other side. We'll just have to turn around and get back here. My gut's telling me to go down these stairs. So we're going to do that."

"Fine. I'll forsake logic for the sole purpose of following the organ which you use daily to digest food." Rolling up the map and sticking it back into his duffel bag, Don zipped it closed.

At least he wasn't going to argue further. Raphael usually had a decent time getting his way through arguments, it wasn't that his brother was a push over, more like Don didn't care enough to spend the time and effort fighting back and forth. He supposed that Don's version of being a pacifist is that he was too lazy to fight. That and the only being in existence who would butt heads with him was Leo, and he was off playing cowboy on a mutant bug-bear-thing.

The stairs didn't take them as far down as Raph thought they would, since they reached a straight and narrow passageway only after a few minutes of stepping down. Like the other passages, this one also veered to the left in another bend. This place must have been built by architects who loved to spiral around everything. Raphael found it to be head spinning and frustrating.

Unlike the level above them, this swerving corridor held no other doors or branching passageways for them to turn onto. It wasn't until they met a double set of thick, stone doors that they had to stop at all. With both of their shoulders pushing against the doors, they barely managed to force it open. Grinding of stone on stone sounded like a grain mill and irritated his ears. Everything was so loud down here.

Before them lay mounds of gleaming treasures. Blue crystals lined the walls in a spiraling fashion and cast that supernatural light upon the golds and silvers of the precious metals before them. Some of those mounds reached above Raphael's height, and he could hear his brother whistling in appreciation of the artifacts. Mostly the metals were formed in simple blocks stacked at least ten feet high, but there were also jewelery and vases with precious gems embedded into them.

"This is coming home with me. Look at this thing. It's made of pure fucking gold," Raph said as he lifted up an elongated, golden seat like a runner would a trophy after a big race.

"Right, Raph. We can find all kinds of uses for a thousand-year-old toilet seat. I'm sure that they accept that as well as credit over at Wal-Mart."

"I'd sell it on eBay, dumbass! I'm not stupid." Raphael crushed the golden toilet seat to his chest with a possessed protectiveness. "How many of those gold bars can you stick in your bag?"

"There's no point in bringing any of this home. There won't be anybody who would be able to convert it into modern currency." Don picked up a thick, gold chained necklace shiny enough to float Shredder's ego. "Unless you have Bill Gates on speed dial?"

"I think I saw Lil' Wayne wear that before. Looked stupid as fuck."

"At least it matched his teeth. Modern fashion is all about matching color schemes. Gold teeth, gold bling, gold - "

"Did you just say bling?" Raph interrupted, "And it's not _gold teeth_. That's his grill. Haven't you ever seen those music videos with Dirty South rap? Everybody in those things have grills. One punch in the mouth and their entire face gets fucked up. It's stupid."

"So was drawing on your teeth with Sharpies, but that didn't seem to stop you."

"Mikey did it first!"

"And that made it a good reason, why?"

"We were ten, you're an asshole, and I'm getting out of here." Raphael even had the courtesy of chucking the toilet seat at his brother before stomping off towards the center part of the treasury.

As with all the other rooms they have seen, this one was also took the shape of a circle with multiple doorways. Except for open passageways, the entrances were blocked by slabs of stone which were engraved with blue runes and outlined by more of those glowing crystals. Eyes narrowing, Raphael couldn't figure out where the open airflow was coming from, since there were no other open passageways other than the one they came through.

"Look up," Don said. It was such a pain to live with a mind reader in the family.

"What the hell?" As he obeyed his possibly psychic brother, Raphael gawked at the endless ceiling that rose far out of sight. Nothing but a black abyss met his eyes as the blue crystals ceased spiraling up, being only placed twenty feet or so above their heads. There was an monotonous hum of rising air that could be heard as both brothers ceased in their movement. It sounded like they were standing in the bottom of a great well.

"There's your mysterious air flow. I wouldn't be surprised if they designed their treasury to be some form of endless pit. Metaphorically, of course." Donatello shifted the bag further up on his shoulder as he dragged the tips of his fingers along the stone wall. Eyes shifting across the mounds of treasure, he didn't show any sign of surprise as he pulled out the remains of a skeletal hand. "The rest of this guy – or actually woman, by the length of the phalanges, is probably buried nearby. My best bet is that any rouge adventurer looking for some extra pocket coins would try to climb into the pit for the treasure and end up falling to their death. Very ironic."

"Which means we can't climb out. Figures." Rubbing his palm against the smooth stone surface, Raphael was mildly surprised to find that it had the some texture as tempered glass. He never would have guessed from afar, where it looks just like any other stone wall. "It's trembling a bit. Ain't normal."

At first the tremors were slight, only tickling the palm of his hands with the movement. It felt as if the wall was shivering from a cold. Instinct to escape, they turned back to the doorway from which they came, to find it completely sealed shut. Frustrated by their lack of exits, Raphael snapped at his brother, "Well this is fucking great. How come you didn't notice the door shut itself?"

"I could say the same for you," Don replied snidely. "I have charges with me, so we can blow our way out of here. It'll bring down the infrastructure of this room, but we should have enough time to roll out the exit before it comes down on us."

"Then let's do it. This place is coming down on us no matter what stupid thing we do."

Working as a well-oiled machine, Raph set the charges as Don managed the wiring. With the rumblings quickly becoming accompanied by the scratches and sizzling of what sounded to be burrowing insects, Raph knew then that this was no natural occurrence. Those things, whatever they were, were coming from above and coming down fast. "We're going to have company if we escape this, so here."

Donatello caught the tossed Sai without thinking, as if it was second nature. It was so common for them to exchange weapons, that most of their reactions have become instinctual. "I suppose this would work slightly better than two pieces of corroded wood."

"Count on it," Raph placed the last charge and they beeped with a flash of red.

"Set and blowing now."

"Damn it, Don!"

Of course his pyromaniac brother would detonate with the both of them so close to the charges. Leaping back, they cleared a good twenty feat in one bound to barely clear the blast. A crack of fire was their cue to exit. Two pairs of feet flew across the stone floor in unison, pushing forward into the hot gale that erupted from the explosion. Tiny shards of rubble stung his open skin, but Raph barely felt the pain, too preoccupied by the tumbling room.

"Nine O'clock!" A claw entered the corner of his left eye, barely caught in his peripheral vision, and it took him less than a second to duck and leap backwards to dodge the second claw. "Raph, above!"

His brother's voice was almost lost by the barrage of black bodies along with the stone rubble. He didn't make it. At least he could see his brother's back only feet away from the exit to this place, but the few precious seconds he needed to escape were haltered by the venom spitting creatures that now circled him.

Everything was moving so fast. Raphael's mind didn't register quite what was happening until he was bumping shoulders with Don, who was screaming, "Brace the weight to your shell and legs!"

He always hated that energy transfer shit.

The creepy bug uglies must have not understood the memo because he could hear their exoskeletons crunching under the weight of tumbling debris, where he managed to support a car-sized chunk of rock on his shoulders. Lowering into a sturdy squat, he relaxed his breathing as much as he could, imagining the heavy weight going down into the floor. His legs quivered, and he could feel his brother struggling to keep upright, but they held their ground.

"What now?" Raph asked through clenched teeth as he controlled his breathing in short bursts.

"Didn't think that far ahead," his brother admitted.

"Right."

Shifting only enough to take more pressure off his neck and more to his shell, he internally shuddered at the creaking that the carapace made. He figured that his shell was strong as hell, but he never wanted to test out how strong it really was. Energy was seeping out of his body as fast as he passed air through his weary lungs. The door was so close.

It had to have only been a foot or two, that was it. They were that close to escaping this mess. What a shitty way to get killed. By the way his brother was wheezing, they couldn't do this for another minute. They had to think of something, or he had to _do_ something.

"You were out the door, dumbass." That little fact didn't click in his mind until now, with the gaping hole of freedom just within arm's reach. The universe had to be mocking him. He was so close, but wasn't fast enough to get free. With his bulking muscles, he was easily the strongest of his brothers, but he sacrificed that strength for speed. He moved about as fast as his non-mutated terrapin family members.

"Yeah, right. Like you would have done different."

Raph was sure that his brother would say more, but Don was obviously having a harder time holding this weight than he was. Sweat and blood were intermixing in rivulets that ran down his face. The steady drip-drip of the droplets hitting the ground unnerved him, especially since he could hear it over the crumbling rock around them.

"Still stupid."

Don snorted, giving him that crooked smile that he only reserved for the more rare, sentimental moments. "Love is like that, isn't it?"

A punch to the gut felt as real as those words, and Raph swore then that they wouldn't be his brother's last ones. Power sparked in his belly and gave his limbs strength. New resolve set in his eyes of fire, he shifted the colossal weight to a single hand, using the other to toss his brother his last Sai.

"Catch. You'll need it."

"What - " As if on any other battlefield, fighting beside his brother, Don mindlessly released the burden on his shoulders to catch the Sai. His face was so perplexed that Raph barked out a laugh as he slammed his heel into Don's chest, throwing him out of the room. "No, _Raph_ - "

An outstretched hand that would never reach him, but even so, he took to his fall with a content heart. Raphael may never again watch his brother's back, but will make damn sure that his brother will keep on moving forward. Even without him there, at his side. Love was stupid like that.

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**A/N- Yeah, cliffhangers. Gotta love 'em! **


	9. Chapter 9

_What is this? Two MONTHS before I post an update? Why is this? Oh, yeah. College. So yeah, I really doubt I'll update again anytime soon, but I was so psyched to write something other than essays! Woohoo! So if this chapter seems just... not there, it probably isn't. It's the best I can pull off with school-brain, though. So enjoy!_

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Don't look. Don't look. Don't look – why was she looking back? Gooey pincers and ears the size of saucers made her skin crawl, but no matter how fast she moved, it never seemed to be fast enough. Robyn was never much of a runner; that was more of her sister's territory. She preferred to have the boys run for her. Or April. Whichever was more convenient.

How many shots did she have left? She was still clutching the pistol so tightly that her fingers have lost most of their blood flow. With the way her entire body was shaking, she doubted she would be able to load another cartridge, let alone aim and hit something. She just kept on reminding herself that she did right. She was supposed to shoot at that thing to keep of – what was his name again? They all had complicated names that reminded her of those fancy classes she took in college, but dropped after a few days. Like knowing star alignments was helping her now.

Breaths were coming in hot gasps that burned her lungs, and her legs felt like slabs of cement instead of actual muscle, but she couldn't stop. The very idea of being eaten alive gave her more energy to keep pushing herself. With all of the tunnels she flew down sloping upwards, her calves were going to be like rocks themselves. Robyn would bet she probably just burned at least five hundred calories.

An opening, "Yes!" Just ahead was an open area with that creepy blue light buzzing in the background. The closer she came to that light, the more her hair stood on end from what she assumed to be some kind of static electricity. Her hair was probably so frizzy now. "Is that all," Robyn gasped for breath, "all you losers got? My," think of something clever, "Oh, what do I care. You're ugly bugs. Come on; let's see how fast you fry with those magic crystals."

Once her foot crossed out of the dark tunnel and into the lit cavern before her, a scream tore from her throat as she skidded to a halt, plopping herself down on her rump as fast as she could. Nothing but lightless space separated herself from the other end of the cavern. She almost ran off a cliff. Clicking and that screeching that rattled her bones was so close now. Too close.

"Always too damn close," she muttered angrily as her hands steadied enough to load another round, clicking back the safety to shoot off the six rounds into the horde. "Get back! Back!"

It was as if the creatures were met with an invisible barrier that knocked them, not backwards, but made the scramble to the sides of the wall, finding no purchase. Some fell, having bad holdings, but most could stick to the walls which they were well-accustomed too. Of course, she emptied the cartridge and they were coming. Again.

They moved slower within the light, as if they were stricken with pain, and she stumbled to her feet; her knees were trembling. Just one foot in front of the other. Don't look at them. Just get away. Robyn couldn't tear her eyes away from the beasts, like she was in a trance of horror. She watched them climb up the walls, towards the shadowed area of the cavern, and hover around her like menacing, giant flies. She swallowed on reflex, there wasn't enough saliva in her mouth to even spit. She didn't move. If she made a single sound, they would pounce.

"Clutch your stomach!" The voice rang out just after the first of the creatures moved, leaping from their posts, and she didn't even have enough time to blink before a bulky force of muscle and shell pulverized her. With her stomach pushing up to her throat, she lost all ability to breathe as the wind was knocked out of her.

Then they were flying. Below them was the seemingly bottomless chasm with the creatures leaping blinding into it's deadly arms, falling through nothing. Robyn never got the chance to hear if they hit bottom, because her feet had already touched the other side. Gagging and retching, she keeled over to spew out what stomach acids and crackers she did manage to eat. A sturdy hand patted her back, helping her dislodge most of the soggy food.

"Yeah, sorry about that, dude. I couldn't slow up or we might have totally missed the other side. Wait, where did you get the goldfish crackers? You could've shared! I was like, totally starving back there."

"Want them?" Robyn snapped; her voice raw and stinging from the acid, "Go ahead. Bon Appe-fucking-tite."

"Okay, okay! Just chill. It was only a joke," Mikey shrugged as he took a step back, "No need to get so touchy, dude."

"Touchy? Are you kidding me? I almost got eaten alive!" Wiping her mouth off on her sleeve, seriously desiring a handkerchief, she took a hesitant peek over the ledge. Not a single ugly monster in sight. Finally sighing with relief, she leaned her back against the tunnel's wall and slid down, knees still shaking hard enough to rattle her teeth.

"Uh, yeah. Eaten alive." She could hear him shift around uncomfortably before adding, "You get used to that eventually. Not the whole being-eaten-alive, but the almost dying part. Give it a few weeks."

Fingers twitched as she drug them through her tangled mess of hair, mouth bubbling and eyes watering fiercely. "I'm sorry," she sobbed, "I'm sorry."

"That's cool – I mean, okay. It's okay too, you know, cry and stuff." He crouched next to her and tapped her shoulder like he was poking an hysterical cat. "Why are you sorry anyways? You kinda just did a lot of awesome stuff, right? You know, the John Wayne shooting and all that."

"I don't know! I'm just sorry!" She hiccupped and scrubbed at her eyes, like that would get them to stop leaking everywhere. "I don't – I don't know. I guess I'm sorry for you guys."

He sighed and she felt him slid down the wall, sitting next to her with his arm slung around her shoulders. "Look, I know it's not easy being green, but - "

"Not that, stupid!" Another wheezy gasp of air as she pumped any excess snot out of her nose, "The always dying part. Or almost dying, whatever. It just sucks. It's not fair because you guys are actually – well, you're not cool. But you're alright, I guess."

"I'll take those as heartfelt words that are just too overcome by my awesomeness," he ruffled her hair as he stood, "But anyways, I don't want the uglies to come back, so we better start heading back. I'm sure April is worried out of her mind by now."

Looking up at him, all grin and bright eyes, she grinned a bit herself as she took his hand. "I don't know about that, but it'd be good to get back anyways. I could use some mouthwash."

"Definitely," his face scrunched up in disgust, "You sure it was _only_ crackers you ate? Because it smells like you ate some of Raph's toe fungus."

"You're the disgusting one!" Blowing as much smelly breath as she could into his face, she laughed as he keeled over in mock death throes. She made sure to give him a few good kicks while he was down. "You have got to be the weirdest person I've ever met."

"What can I say? I grew up on soap operas and Leo's lectures. That type of environment would make all kinds of weirdoes. Just look at Don!" He flipped to his feet like one of those super kung-fu fighters she would see in the movies and grabbed her hand, pulling her forward. "Can you handle a walk? Because I can totally carry you again, as long as you don't barf on me."

"You should be glad to be barfed on by me!" She didn't know why she said that, but she felt the need to defend herself somehow. Even if her attempt was bad. "I should make you carry me, just because you punched me."

"Where did that come from? I don't hit girls!" Mikey crouched down like a pony so that she could hop up on his shell, "That was a love tap at best. Raph has hit me harder in his sleep!"

"I'm not a super ninja like you guys. You need to treat me with more finesse." She scowled as he snorted so hard that she could hear the snot go up into his brain. "You're such a jerk!"

"Only because Leo - " Another rumbling crack of stone on stone filled the tunnels behind them, as if there was a cave-in or an explosive that went off. "What the hell was that? Don? We better hurry if we don't want the rest of this place coming down on us."

Joking tone cut off and replaced with a solemn and worried expression, he leaped into a full sprint that caused her to grip his neck like a life line. He didn't object, though. She was probably cutting off all the circulation to his brain. Robyn could feel the pounding pulse beneath her palms, and she was sure it wasn't from the heavy running.

* * *

Dust was everywhere. It crept down his throat and blinded him. He mouthed the words but no sounds came from him. Raph. Raph. Raphael. His brother's name. Don swiped at that dust, to get away from it; maybe he could see his brother again. Maybe he can dig him up. Get him out of there. Anything. It can't be like this. He can't just let it end like this.

Not possible. He just kept on thinking that it wasn't possible. He had to be there. He was always there; they were always there. At times in the past he could never really escape them. Now he just wanted to find him. Digging blindly, he shifted and heaved what rubble he could. Only did he hear clicking that was not made from stone, did he stop. Drawing the Sai now at his hips with such familiarly that could not have been from his own experience, he waited.

And they came.

First one leapt at him from above, an entire chamber now empty with no ceiling to give it shape, and he used the prong with deadly precision to cut it down. One. Emotions bubbled below the surface, just about ready to boil. Three surrounded him. Jumped at once.

Duck, lean back, roll, and stab twice. Three. Flip off the wall to catch the last one from behind. Four. More came. Pairs turned into groups, which grew into hordes. Where they all came from, Don could ponder and figure that out, but he didn't have time.

His brother was buried. The thought kept on resurfacing in his mind. Images of his face, his last rueful grin were burned into the back of his optic nerves. Five. Six. He dismembered these two from below, as they pounced at him. Don impaled them right under the thorax pad, hitting the fatal pressure point. But it wasn't enough.

He couldn't stop moving. Teachings drilled into his very subconscious drifted away as _his_ weapons led him. Guided him. Move on instinct. Duck. Roll. Stab. Keep moving.

"Twenty-five," he counted. His voice was raw, guttural. Almost a growl. "Twenty-six." Three prongs ripped the head off another creature. It wasn't enough. His brother was still down there. He couldn't hear him. Don could only hear the damn clicking and screeching of these monsters.

They grew like a swarming mass of locusts. Numbers grew past fifty and he stopped counting. There was just too many. His entire vision was encompassed with black limbs and his senses drowned by the deafening screeches. He was going to join his brother.

Pincers dug into flesh and claws ripped at his limbs, but he would not let go of the weapons. He just wanted to give up. He didn't want to abandon him. He couldn't. He should just let these bastards eat him. It's what he deserves. He left his brother. His own family.

_Get going. Move_.

Words that were not his own pounded into his head, then. Pushing him. Keep moving. Keep fighting. His body was not his own, moving on it's own accord. Duck. Roll. Stab. Too many of them to count the fallen. He didn't want to go. His vision swam in a haze of hot, salty water. He couldn't leave him.

_Go._

It wasn't real. His own mind was hallucinating. Maybe some wild survival instinct that his body created. That wasn't his brother, because his brother was dead.

"Get off him!" A growl not his own. Four more fell in two deadly swipes of his Sai. Leaped over a small group, using the wall as a stepping stone. Keep moving, try to move, but knees are weak. He wanted to stay. He can't just leave him.

"I'm sorry," Don choked on the dust, "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

Donatello ran, and he didn't look back.

* * *

The sound of dripping blood always sounded so hypnotic to Leonardo. Head drooped as the pit-pats of the thick substance lulled him to sleep. Or maybe that was the extensive blood-loss. It was hard for him to tell, as he couldn't feel much of his body at the moment.

Limbs were entrapped on what he recognized as stone, only in spiked pillars that jutted from the ground in unnatural ways. The last time he encountered an event like this was when he fought against the other Y'Lantians; what was his name? The lone survivor. At the time, Leo felt a deep sorrow for the soul, but a threat was still a threat. Only now, instead of an enemy before him, there was April. Only she wasn't there. Just her body with eyes of ice.

"What means is this, that you disturb my peace?"

Licking the outside of his chapped mouth, gathering up what fluids he could, he coughed out, "Augustus O'Neil." His lung rattled in his chest. Internal bleeding. "We only came to bring him home; I apologize if we disturbed you. Please," Leo swallowed the blood climbing up his throat, "release my friend. We don't mean you any harm."

"And if I refuse? What will you do then, green warrior?" April – no, the spirit gripped his bloodied chin with her thumb and finger, making him look up at her smug expression, "You have no power here. I have the power. My people made sure of that."

"They left you," snippets of information from Don filtered through his hazy mind. Something about a priestess. An overseer of some fountain. "They fled the city."

Her expression darkened, ice turned to black coal as the stones entrapping him began to tremble, causing his entire body to ache with the strain. "I chose to stay. It was my choice and duty. You know nothing of this."

He knew some, if only he could remember. Closing his eyes to shut out the angered expression of the woman before him – the woman who stole the face of his friend, he fought to remember what his brother told him. Leo could recall some discussion about the translations, of how stone tablets in the library spoke of their history. That is, before the writings broke into cracked fragments, showing the end of their people.

This was the first of two cities, where the puzzlebox was created. Something about Y'lantians fleeing a city on the surface - Leo was distracted by Mikey at the time of being told. His brother always had to bring up the most embarrassing stories around anybody new that they met.

Entity. That was the name of the Y'Lantian who was left behind in the Second City. He fled the First because the King was experimenting with the fountain and his people. Created these monsters. The poor people.

"I'm sorry," Leo opened his eyes to stare at the woman, "I'm sorry that they left you, but I am not your enemy. I only want to go home with my family."

Around her neck was the amulet, the same one that gave Mikey the memories of Augustus. He was certain that was where the power to move the earth by free will originated from. Entity used it to almost defeat them, in the past. He couldn't lose to it again.

"You are wrong. They did not leave me. I sent them away and froze that man whom you speak of," she barely whispered now, "He had hair of the sun. Of fire. It had been many births since I last set my eyes upon that light."

"It was yellow, right? That's what I thought when I first saw it," Leo said. Memories of a childhood long gone were still ingrained in him. He would never forget the first time he witnessed the sun. "It hurts to look at it, but you can't look away from it because everything is so bright. So you just stare."

Don almost blinded himself staring at the sun so long, as if he was going to figure out what exactly it was by simply watching it forever. This woman didn't seem to share the same fond memories as a bitter darkness crossed her features.

"We were so close. I can't feel it anymore, the heat." April, the woman, closed her eyes. Trying to remember, but failed as she scowled and gripped the amulet at her neck. The stone tightened. "We had to go back," her voice shook with raw emotion, "we had to go back because they hunted us. We could never be safe, so we fled back down and never came up again."

"Some of your people are still there, they survived." Time seemed so vast now, recalling back to the green haired creatures near the farmhouse. The fish people. The Avians. All remains of this dead civilization.

"You lie!" Stone drew more blood now, his life draining away with every second. "They are all gone. I sent them away with the great light. They could not dwell on this world, so I sent them to another."

Hornets. Giant, winged insects with hints of some ancient, primal people. A puzzle with all the pieces slowly coming together. "They're not there; we've been to that world!" Her eyes sharpened and Leo pierced his mouth shut. No need to anger the woman who can kill him with her will alone. "We can find them, your people. If you just let us go ho - "

"Do not speak of that!" Pillars crushed him, suffocating him. "I will not hear of this home. You will stay here, with me – or die. They all can die."

Reaching behind his head to grasp his own sword, the woman drew his own Katana and pointed the still dirtied blade at him. The point just grazing the tip of his forehead, between his eyes. April's eyes should never be this dead. This blue and cold. It wasn't her. This wasn't his friend, a woman he called sister.

The blade pressed into his flesh, drawing only a small amount of blood; his life. Steel that he forged himself, which he loved as if it was a part of his own body, rose above his head. His own blood dripped down from the tip of the blade, as if it regretted what it was about to do. Leonardo steeled himself; for he would not beg. If his friend was still in that body, he would not show her weakness or pain. He couldn't do that to her.

"It's okay. I have no regrets."

The Katana mourned as it was swept down, to cut it's master. Leonardo caught the faintest glimpse of the ice melting from the eyes. He never turned away from them, even in the end.

* * *

**A/N - Yeaaaah... Brain dead. Reviews would be awesome and maybe help me to understand where I veered off from the story. I lost the outline - or rather, my old outline isn't updated so I just wrote this on the fly. Heh heh heh. Thanks in a shout out to T.D. Rayne for pushing me to write! The fans are always a joy to hear from.**


	10. Chapter 10

_I'm done. I think. A quick shout out to Aster Sapphire and T.D. Rayne for helping me through this last chapter. I probably would have passed out in the middle of it due to the very late time of night/morning. So thanks for that. Heh._

* * *

There was no way out. Endless tunnels flew around him as he rushed to the only point, the only person, who knew anything about getting out of this place. Otherwise they were not only trapped, but they were going to be attacked again and again by those creatures. Donatello refused to accept that fate. Not for any, no – anymore of his family. And Robyn.

Thoughts were fuzzy as his lightheartedness hindered his thinking, but he could grasp his location and general direction well enough to find the crumbling library. What once stood great and tall now lay in shambles. So much history destroyed. How many people or years it took to record those stone tablets, Don didn't know. He didn't have the time to contemplate as he kept his eyes focused on the path ahead of him – ignoring the ghosts around him.

The man was still frozen. With the sarcophagus open and revealing the blue light from within, Don began to study the symbols engraved along the sides. What he best understood was that the symbols was a type of hieroglyphics, like what he would see with ancient Mayan civilizations. Using this knowledge, as well as an understanding of many other written languages, he managed to get a dim idea of what was told. To him, he imagined some sort of chant or prayer of sorts – possibly even a spell. After all, with these people, the powers he's observed by them could be considered to be magic.

But the light wouldn't fade. Augustus O'Neil wouldn't wake up.

Time was so precious and rare now. Heart was beating by so quickly; painfully reminding him of how little he may have left. What they may have left. There was no telling when the swarm would come again. Or how long they would be able to last with no provisions. It was all so heavy. Too much stressed distracted him, so he pushed that sickening nausea away and focused purely on the writing before him. It was Leo who took on the burden, not him. He had to find a way out. He had to fix this.

It all began with the opening of the puzzlebox. That was where he should begin. Digging into the dufflebag still hanging from his side, he drew out the mysterious box and eyed the symbols there, to the ones along the sarcophagus. They matched. Like a Rubix cube, Don tested and played with the puzzlebox by twisting the different planes of it. His finger must have brushed against the needed symbol, because the cube began to emit a powerful blue light. Just like the sarcophagus. Reacting on instinct more than intellect, Don pressed that light against the frozen body of April's uncle and was blinded by the powerful light.

"I'm not just a floating head, am I?"

* * *

They were too late. No words could escape. Robyn could only stare ahead at the blood. At her sister. There was so much blood. Faintly she could hear a choking sob to her right. Mikey. She couldn't tear her eyes away from the scene to comfort him. Not that she could. She felt him move forward. Just a few steps. There was so much blood.

Just a minute ago they were fighting about how to read the map, so that they could come here. She never expected to find her own sister with a blade swimming in another person. Especially not somebody who April cared about enough to stay in the city. Away from home. All of this because she couldn't read the stupid map. Now they were too late and her sister was dripping with blood. Leonardo's blood. It was too much.

"What are you doing?" Her voice crackled like static as she screamed at her, "Why did you do that?"

A blur of green rocketed beside her fast enough to unbalance her. He was going for her sister. "Mike - "

Again, too late. He slammed into her and they slid back across the stone floors. The blood trailed behind them in a sickening smear of crimson. She could smell it. The copper and heat. It was so musky that it made her stomach lurch.

"S-stop it! Both of you! Stop this!" She was so useless – but she couldn't approach the body. It was still slumped forward, encased in stone. The floor trembled as she saw a flash of blue light and Mikey being shot into the air, hurtled at this stone basin at the center of the room. His body cracked wetly as he bounced off the side of it. April was walking towards him again; her eyes were blue.

April had green eyes.

"Don't you touch him." Robyn found her feet again, pushing herself to a sprint to get the distance between her sister and the still Mikey. "I don't know who you are, but you better not take one more step." Hands quivered as she raised the gun holstered in the back of her pants, bringing the barrel up and at the form she called sister. "I'm serious, Apri – you. Whoever you are. I'll shoot."

Her sister's face twitched, but remained cold. Like stone. "I know of this weapon. It brings thunder but not of lightening." The icy eyes sharpened and did not stray from the gun in her hands. "This body will die, but I will not."

"So you took her?" Words shook as her hands did, causing the gun to rattle. "Then give her back! You can't just – just do something like that!"

The stone face cracked into a smile. "Why not?"

Fingers slid off the gun. Too sweaty. That was her sister, but she never wanted to see her look like that. Not so cold or cruel. Her sister was warm and all she ever did was push her away. "I'm sorry." Robyn lowered the gun. Eyes wet. "I just – I can't. I'm sorry. I don't know how to get you back."

There was no compassion in the iced shards. Only bitterness. A blue amulet glowed like a cold sun as she raised her hands again; the stone trembling as it rose. The gun was dropped. No bullets in it anyways. Robyn couldn't look at the woman any longer. Not when she had the face of her sister twisted in such a way. She just wanted her April back. Instead there was only a monster.

"I'll wait for you."

She closed her eyes. There was a little red slide. Warm eyes that reflected spring grass. A yellow hat bigger than the sun. A bright smile and a bushel of unruly, ginger hair. The smell of sand and rain. She was finally home.

* * *

"Leo," he croaked. Head was seriously splitting in half by how much blood pooled in his eyes. The thick, hot liquid made them burn as he wiped as much out as he could with his hand. His eyes were still burning. That image of his brother still carved in his mind. That can't be right. Probably another dream. Like the one from before, only it wasn't real.

"I'll wait for you." Another voice. A girl. Recognition was hazy, so he sat up to see who was crying. Robyn and April. Only giant boulders were being levitated along April's sides, pointed at the younger sister. That can't be right either. April wouldn't do that. Leo can't bleed that much. Robyn is crying again. He had to get up and move.

"Don't – April!" His voice traveled faster than his feet, but she did not stop. There was only a glimpse of recognition; a brief twist of her face as the massive rocks came forward. It was so quick, he didn't even take three steps forward when she was gone. Robyn was standing right before him. Then she wasn't. "_Why_? Why is any – I don't..."

He couldn't finish. His throat was too tight. There was so much weight, but they were gone. April turned to him, her back away from the crushed rubble that entrapped her sister. It was too real.

"The dead must lie. They can not leave."

Mikey took a step back. Leo looked so little and pale. Another step. His skin was still sticky from the drying blood. His brother's blood. Another step. The palm of his hand touched cold stone again.

"Get away from me," April snapped at him. He tore his eyes away from the broken form of his brother just long enough to look behind him, at the blue pool. "Do not touch me."

All the warnings. He was never good at doing what he was told. Stepping around the pool so that he could place it between himself and her, he hovered both hands over the depth-less basin. His brother was gone. Robyn was gone. April was gone. Every face pounded in the back of his mind. He couldn't shake their vivid eyes. He wouldn't.

"You took them from me," he rose his head to match her gaze, "I'm going to get them back."

April lowered her hands to her sides. Face chiseled in stone. "The dead will always lie. They will not leave."

Desperation sprung from his throat in a crackling cry, "That's bullshit! They aren't just things you can take and keep. They're my family. You can't – you can't take my family."

"The dead will always lie," she repeated. "They never stir or waken. You have no understanding of what true loneliness is. When your own thoughts abandon you and you are left only with the dead. That is what awaits you."

Mikey's eyes dropped from the woman before him, landing on the reflection of the pool. That wasn't his face. It was Leo. His brother was looking back at him. "No," he choked out, "You're wrong. I'm not alone. I can still remember them."

He closed his eyes, withdrawing his hands back to grip the edges of the basin. Fear was raw and scraping at the insides of his chest. Cutting off his air. He didn't want to be alone. It was too heavy.

"Faces fade away." Rock began shifting and his eyes snapped open to witness the stone rolling under her feet as if they were the tides of an ocean. "Nothing is left. You will begin to question who you are. What you know. Why you are still alive."

"Is that what happened to you?" He sounded so small in his head. "They left you and so you think that you'll get them back by taking my family? I don't get it. I just," droplets fell down to ripple the pool, "I just want them back."

Pale, familiar hands gripped the other side of the basin and a pair of blue eyes reflected back at him. They froze his blood. "Drown in that pain until your very thoughts abandon you. Become numb to all that you know and then you will understand. Then you will hate yourself as greatly as you hate me."

"I don't hate you," Mikey whispered. The long, slender fingers released their hold on the stone basin and he could sense her body stiffen. "I can't. It's just too sad." His brother's face was distorted in the many ripples of the pool and faded. His shoulders drooped forward with a great weight. "I'm sorry. I can't – I can't help anybody."

"I do not understand." Traces of his own April started to leak through, then. "Why do you say this? You need to hate me. I hate you. I hate all of you."

"That's why," Michelangelo raised his wet gaze to give her a shadow of a smile, "I need to forgive you."

"No." The ice melted and her face broke away in pieces. "I will not accept this. You will die as the others have and the faces will finally fade away. Then I may be at peace."

Mikey stood his ground as the earth trembled about him; pillars and mounds of rock rose to shake at him in fury. He never broke eye contact with the woman. Green was finally starting to peek through the blue ice. "This isn't peace. Numbing yourself from that pain will only hurt you more. You can't carry around this hate. You have to let it go."

"Look at them!" Broken bodies were raised by the stone floor. On display. Mikey didn't tear his eyes away, but he swallowed back the burning vile that was rising from his stomach. It was crushing him. "This is all that is left. They are gone. You are alone. The dead will always lie."

"I know that!" Stone cracked under his hands; grip shaking. "But I can't just give up. I have to keep going. Even if I'm alone, I can't look back. That's what makes us alive. We have to keep on going forward!"

"You broke it." Her voice was distant, almost lost. The pool was leaking now, so Mikey finally released his grip. The liquid began to flow faster; it flooded his feet. "You killed me."

"This is what ties you here," Mikey said. Clenching a tight fist, he brought it down on the edge of the basin to break it down further. A waterfall of liquid ice chilled him to the bone. The stone was lost under the waves splashing down. "Then I'll break it. You don't have to stay here anymore. Your people are gone, yeah, but you can go to them. You can move on."

"They betrayed me," April sobbed as she dropped to her knees, body slack. "They left me here to p-protect the city. I w-was to wait for them. They never c-came."

"I know," Mikey knelt besides her and draped an arm over her shoulders. "But you're still connected to them, you still have that bond. That doesn't just go away, even when they hurt you. You have to forgive them and move on."

April began to glow a soft blue. Warmer than before, her human features were absorbed by the light and the image of a majestic Y'Lantian woman appeared before him. She reached up to cup his face, saying nothing as she slowly faded away. Red hair replaced the white and the flush of living cheeks told him that at least one other survived. He wasn't alone.

Then why did he feel so heavy?

* * *

Augustus O'Neil never expected to ever wake again, let alone wake to a talking turtle. It didn't say much – or he, from what he could guess of the deeper voice. There were so many voices and lights the last he remembered. He was trying to get everybody out because they were coming. Those things. He was always against the experiments; he learned enough from his own race to know better. That King didn't pay him any mind and his people suffered for it.

All of the tunnels were devoid of light; a stark contrast to the bright and active corridors he was used too. The turtle didn't give him a name or an introduction. He figured that he may as well follow the creature, it was not as if he had anything else to do. They passed through the central library and he had to stop for a moment, taking in the destruction with sad eyes. He could still see the bustling people giving or taking the tablets from the ancient shelves. Sharing knowledge. That's all he wanted between their people. Instead there was only genocide. It was too sad.

"We don't have time to mourn." The eyes were hard and sharp, but not as piercing as the tongue. "Either we move or we die."

"Are they coming?" He sobered up at the dark memories. Screeches that cut to the bone and black, scaly skin that tore through rock with ease. The ears were especially creepy. "Because that's good incentive to haul ass. Not that we can outrun them for long. They track through sound and the vibrations in the rock wall."

"Keep your mouth shut and feet light, then." A green hand gripped him by the elbow and dragged him along. Augustus let him. He didn't really have a reason to fight back. The dark expression reminded him strongly of many of the older soldiers who fought against their own King. They lost many lives in that war. Not only against each other, but also against those creatures. There was always too many bodies to dispose of.

He wanted to ask why the turtle was here. Where he came from. Who he was. The guy didn't seem really keen on talking at all so he simply followed him. There had to be a purpose for the green guy to be here. It wasn't known by other humans that this city even existed. That any of the cities existed, let alone the people themselves. Hopefully they made it to the surface, like they wanted. Or at least to a better world. That would be nice.

"This isn't enough." The guy finally stopped moving and let go of his arm. Augustus rubbed the sore wrist. He needed to find some ice for that later or it was going to swell up like a bloated hen. "This will be pointless if you don't understand." Even for a turtle, his expressions were so human that Augustus felt deep pangs of sympathy for the creature. He was definitely in pain. A lot of it.

"Understand what? Because I don't even know if I'm awake. Following a talking turtle isn't the weirdest thing that's ever happened to me, but it's close."

"Hornet world higher on the list?" A spark of humor from the turtle.

"That would be it," Augustus admitted. Although how the guy knew about that place was beyond him. He never thought he would get out until he found that giant puzzlebox. It took him a few years, but he managed to crack the code and get out of there. Only to end up in this world. It didn't seem that he was ever going to get home at this point. He wondered idly how big the girls were getting. They were probably up to his shoulders by now. Or at least April would be; the little Robyn was always shorter than the rest.

"Then you know how to operate this." The guy only had three fingers but he could unzip that bag of his and whip out one of those puzzleboxes. They were supposed to be sent away, with the people. It was the only way they could get out of this cursed city.

"A bit," he admitted. "Last time I used one of those it was to get away from that hornet nest. At the time I had one of those on my person, it was how I got to the damn place." Reaching out to take the box; the heavy weight in his hands filled him with a nervous energy. The light was so bright and strong that it was like every fiber of his being was being pulled apart in all directions. Definitely wasn't what he considered a pleasant feeling.

"And it came to April's room. Back at her childhood home."

"Childhood?" Augustus shook his head, "What do you mean? They should still be kids. Not even teenagers yet. I was only gone for a few years."

"She's not a child anymore." The guy came forward too fast for his eyes to follow and gripped his shoulders tighter than any anaconda. "When you used this, you got separated from it. You were trapped here with the Y'Lantians. I can't have that happen. We all have to get back home."

"I-I don't know," he said. His very bones were starting to creak. "What do you mean not a child? What about Robyn? Joann? My brother? How long has it been?" Breath started to increase as his mind raced through all of his most recent memories of them. Two little girls pulling on his shorts, trying to get him to stay. A curt nod from his brother; a man who said little. The warm kiss on his cheek from their bubbly mother that never disappeared. It wasn't that long ago. It couldn't be.

"Focus here." The guy shook him hard enough to make his neck pop. "I need this to be traced back to the original location that it teleported from. I don't have years to figure this out. I have less than an hour and that is not enough time."

"I'm sorry, I just don't - "

"_Don't_ apologize," he was released, "Too much is gone for apologizes. You have to work this. Or at least tell me how. I can learn. I can fix this."

He simply nodded. That was all he could do. He just hoped that when the time came, he wouldn't disappoint. Home sounds too good to screw this up. Especially Joann's cherry pie. There had been too many months with green sludge for food; as kind is it was that these people offered him any food at all. Still, nothing beat a good home-cooked meal.

Augustus followed the green guy through more of those winding tunnels. He could faintly remember the location and purpose of most of them, but time had worn away so much of the insignias that it was hard to distinguish anything anymore. It was just a shell of what it once was. Time must have passed well beyond his generation. Augustus didn't know whether or not he should be astounded and awed that he was able to experience time travel, or to be saddened. What if everything he knew was gone? This green guy could be human kind evolved. He might be the last man alive.

"Damn it." A fist crushed stone as the turtle froze. He knew they were making their way towards the center of the city, but he didn't expect to see this. Instead of the grand tapestries and art that decorated the room to idolize the prized basin; there was only death. Another turtle was torn apart by spiked stone, a sword sticking out of him. Or her, it was hard to tell from afar.

"Are you okay?" He looked back to his new companion who was leaning his face up against the crook of his arm, his entire body almost merging with the wall. It was like the guy didn't even have the strength to exist anymore. "I guess not. Sorry," he added. Poor guy. He was never very tactful.

He should do something comforting. Maybe he'll go and cover up the body and lay it to rest. That might help him. Stepping into the room, it was hard to see much with there being so much water and upturned mounds of rubble. By the time he stumbled over the dislodged floor, his eye caught a limp hand under a nearby pile. Just ten feet away.

It was human.

Continuing around the dead turtle, he knelt by the hand and began to shift away bits and pieces of the rubble. The hand gradually turned into an arm and he was able to uncover most of the torso to see that it was a woman. He revealed the collarbone and neck when a stiff hand crushed down on his shoulder.

"You don't want to look there." The voice was distant. Lost.

"Who's under here." His heart began to beat faster and faster. He mentioned April. He said she wasn't a child anymore. He had to have known her. "I need to know." More rock was thrown off as he dug with more desperation. The neck was slender and he saw strands of bright, red hair peek through. April had red hair, even if it wasn't that bright. She was his carrot head.

"Don't - "

The green hand caught his own and held it tightly. Augustus lowered his head. "It's April, isn't it? She came here to find me."

"She did come here to find you, yes." The turtle hauled him to his feet. "But that's not April. It's Robyn." He could hear the turtle swallow as the grip around his elbows tightened. It was an apology he couldn't bring himself to accept. She was too little to be here. She was just a girl. Not even a teenager.

Smaller rocks tumbled down the piles of rubble, causing his head to snap up at the sound. It was another turtle and he was carrying another woman. "Joann!" He managed to tear himself away from the iron grip and make his way up the rubble to reach them, "Can you hear me? Is she okay? She's so pale. Where's April?"

This turtle had eyes brighter than a high noon sky in the country. He stared past him and shook his head, "April. This – This is April. She's okay, I think."

"It can't be." Hands shook as he reached out to touch her face, but couldn't do it. He could only hover inches away. "She's just a little girl. She can't be grown up."

"Raph's gone," the turtle behind him choked out, "He's back by the treasury. I guess Leo didn't make it either. Or Robyn. Those things got to us all, I guess."

It was too much. This was supposed to end after they escaped. The death and sadness was supposed to stop. Stepping back from the two turtles, turning away as the smaller of the two leaned against the other. It was too sad. All of it. This shouldn't have happened.

He still held the cube in his hands. He couldn't look at the mourning turtles anymore. Their grief made his heart heavy. If there was a way that he could turn back time or go forward, there had to be a way to undo what was done. All the years of study and observation were trained into his mind like a well-trained muscle. He knew with instinct what was needed to be done.

Augustus O'Neil turned away from the broken basin and waded through the shallow water to find the turtles gathering up their fallen. He couldn't look at the girls. If this worked, if he somehow managed to set back what was wrong - he never had too see them so broken.

"Do you remember where that other guy was? Raph, you said?"

The sharp eyed one turned to him to say, "It would be best to bring the body back with us."

"Him," the other said with said eyes, "He's still him, Don. Don't say it like that."

"Then focus on that location when I activate this," he said. Both eyes were then drawn to the puzzlebox in his hands, transfixed. Twisting and pressing what he could remember being the last sequence he used, he remembered the cherry pie and endless road beneath his motorcycle. The wild wind tearing through his clothes and hair. The laughter of the girls and comforting presence of his brother.

Light filtered from the puzzlebox slowly at first, but one by one each of the turtles touched the box themselves. Their eyes were closed. He could only imagine what they were thinking, believing. Even in the darkest hour, they came together with him to change the future, or fate - whichever they choose to call it. So he closed his eyes against the light and let fate draw it's course with the sole thought of home in his mind.

* * *

**A/N - They make it home and all is well. Or they all get zapped into oblivion because he doesn't know how to use the damn thing. I guess, at the end of it, I kind of realized that the fact that they get home or not doesn't really matter. It felt done to me. I don't know why. Maybe it's the 5,000+ words and late hour that told me that. It turned out that Augustus had most of the narration in this chapter and I'm not sure what to think about that. In my head it actually all works out. I'll probably have a couple one-shots or maybe an epilogue for this later. Just not when it's so late. HA HA HA HA HA! I also figured that if they didn't at least get Augie back than that would really suck. I mean, they came here FOR him and he wasn't even in 90% of the story. There was so much that I wanted to do and either couldn't find a way to fit it in or didn't have the energy to do so. I suppose if I get enough angry reviews that I'll revise the last chapter, since you dudes at least deserve that, but this is the best I got at one-in-the-morning. Ha ha ha ha ha!**


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